Branson Missouri

Friday 2014-05-04 The last day of our cross Oklahoma trek took us through Tulsa. We didn't stop and in fact hardly saw any of it. The intercity thruway took us around the north side and far away from the city center. East of Tulsa we had a choice of taking a new toll expressway version of rt 412 or the original two lane country rt 412. As you might guess we took the road less traveled.

The road less traveled

The country road wound its way thru rolling hills and whistle stop villages. Spring is a-poppin here and the green scenery was refreshing after all the rugged rock of New Mexico and tan prairie grass of Oklahoma. We followed rt 412 east into Arkansas for about 50 miles and the turned north into Missouri and our destination in Branson.

Treasure Lake Resort turned out to be a real "Resort". We are staying here though our Coast to Coast membership which is an affiliation of membership campgrounds. Some of the C to C campgrounds we've visited are nice and some are just ok but this one is really nice. We've in High cotton and  only paying $17 @ night.

Treasure Lake Resort Activities center

They have a discount theater ticket office here at Treasure Lakes and we had planned on getting all our desired tickets there. When we went to the office on Saturday morning there was a group of people standing around looking lost. One of them informed us the ticket agent had just left in tears and apparently had quit.

Treasure Lake Resort hike/bike trail

One of the shows we want see is just outside the campground so we decided to go there and get tickets. Inside the lobby was kind of like a mall and before we realized we were not at the theater ticket booth the timeshare barker started his schpeel. In hindsight my radar should have detected the trick as he was located between shysters selling miracle cures. The one to the left was hawking shoe inserts that I heard him promise a woman would restore blood flow to her diabetic feet. To the right was an assortment of healing crystals, he had no customers so I didn't get to hear what these glowing orbs would do for you, but I'm sure it was something fantastic, like curing cancer or maybe reversing the aging process.

Our campsite at Treasure Lake Resort

Back to the timeshare huckster, we listened to his pitch and reluctantly signed up for the tour. I say reluctantly because despite any assurances that it was a 90 minute tour we knew it was going to be a grueling 3-4 hour pressure sales attempt. Armed with the confidence that I can say no longer than they can say buy, we went to the "tour", this one presented by Club Wyndham.

Three and a half hours later we left victorious, our discount ticket voucher in hand and our wallets intact. Because we only had vouchers we decided to visit each theater. This served two purposes, not having to stand in line on show night, and hopefully picking good seats. We were very pleasantly surprised to find at each theater our assigned seats were center and in the first three or four rows.

The shows we had selected had rack rate prices of $29 to $49. The campground discount ticket office would have given us about 10% off. By going through the timeshare presentation we ended up with eight tickets to four shows for $14 each.

Was it worth putting ourselves in the clutches of evil for cheap seats? Yesterday soon after the ordeal and feeling spent, I would have said I don't know. This morning, I'm feeling pretty good about it.