Saturday, June 1, 2024
The car lady said stay in the right two lanes. Then as we passed a right exit, she said take the left exit 2L. I mean, she’s usually pretty good. She knows her stuff, but that was a total goof. We continued toward Memphis or some such place we were not wanting to go, then took the next exit, over, and back toward exit 2L. That seemed obvious. But 2L was no longer on the table. We went into a snarly bunch of tangled roads and were ordered to stay in the middle two lanes. It got very dark in the caverns of roads and with my sunglasses on, I could not read the highway signs. We were in the left of the middle lanes and followed the road, with Keith saying the middle lanes split! Which way am I supposed to go?! The other way. We were supposed to go the other middle lane way. We went on some more, and took an exit. The first building after the exit said “The Edge of Hell”. Huh. We turned right, turned right, turner right and ended back up on the highway. I said maybe we had bypassed the difficult part. AND WE HAD. We got into a neighborhood and the next direction was turn left soon. The car lady was really not being helpful. We were looking at the direction screen so hard, we almost drove right past Joe’s Kansas City BBQ.
We had two people recommend Joe’s to us, then we consulted our KC BBQ man, Daniel. He gave us a list – topped with Joe’s. He also gave us menu recommendations and the important tip to order curbside, because the line to get in is always long. There were about 20 people spilling out of the restaurant, so that was a great idea. I had to repeatedly encourage Keith to over order. I brought an empty cooler and ice just to take leftovers or overorders to Branson with us. Joe’s was originally in a corner of a gas station, so I hopped out to get a picture of its cuteness while we awaited our delivery.
We shared a Z-Man (beef brisket, provolone cheese, crispy onion rings) and a Rocket Pig (pulled pork in sweet-hot Glaze, bacon, pepper jack cheese, BBQ mayo, and fried jalapenos). The Z-man came heavily recommended, but the Rocket Pig was better. Hot take! We had BBQ beans (voted best part of the meal by us both), fries, mac-n-cheese, street corn, and a whole cup of pickle slices. We drove a couple blocks away, parked on a shady street and enjoyed our picnic in the car lunch. We have a pound of brisket and a pound of Smokie Joe – brisket and pork in a special sauce, plus red beans and rice and dirty rice, plus leftovers of all the sides for tomorrow.
I’m still full.
We got to drive through a really big house neighborhood on the way back to the highway (which involved an on-ramp and then a straight road out of town). The houses were beautiful and far bigger than your average big houses. It was a lucky spot to get to drive through.
Then we made it to our hotel in Branson 🙂