This park has something to offer everyone. It has many rides, a pioneer area, shops, and shows. The kids enjoyed the Mad Scientist show, and we all enjoyed the ending sock-hop show. It was hot, hot in August, though, and I abandoned the teens in the heat of the day and went back to the resort for a few hours. The park is also pretty hilly.

We had the barbeque buffet in the front of the park, which was good and reasonably priced for an amusement park. There's also a pizza buffet for around $6, among many other restaurants and outdoor booths. There's a parade at 11am that if you want to participate in, you can carry a life-size puppet.

It was great. When you walk in, you are immediately greeted by wonderful, considerate people. You also see so much to do and explore that you don't know what to do first. It’s really exciting. There are places to eat, drink, relax, explore, and just have fun. It is a place for everyone to go, including kids of all ages.

"Welcome! You have a great past just ahead of you!" proclaims the entrance sign at Silver Dollar City. And that includes some serious old-fashioned shopping and plenty of eating opportunities, ranging from hot-dog and funnel-cake stands to sit-down restaurants, at least one of which features live music. Most fun is to buy stuff you can see being made, like baskets, blown glass creations, brooms, and apple butter. If it’s a sign you’re after, you have your choice of a plain, no-frills Sawmill shop sign, or Mari Sue will paint a primitive for you. Zelda fans will be delighted by the ocarina shop. In front of a shop selling (among other things) stuffed animals, a pioneer-dressed woman was demonstrating waxing a hapless stuffed toy to clean it. Bob spent some time getting in the mood for the holidays at Christmas Hollow. Leather, candles, guns, knives, several jewelry stores, and wagon train dolls… what you can’t find here is a tougher question to answer.

At its strategic location of entrance/exit, Ozark Marketplace contains nine shops, in addition to its own vast inventory. Just a fraction of what we found here: a Coca-Cola memorabilia section, all items on sale; half life-sized Betty Boop dolls; homemade jams, jellies, relishes, etc., at a better price than we’d paid south of Kansas City; and of course, plenty of Halloween decorations (it was two weeks away at the time).

Segueing to the taste buds… I was intrigued by the jerky stand, selling turkey, buffalo, deer, and elk jerky, plus some really exotic (to my mind) kinds like alligator, wild boar, and kangaroo jerky. Brown’s Candy Factory sells fudge and peanut brittle--yum. Phoebe’s sells taffy, and there are two kettle corn shops.

And now, for dinner: Bob had walked by Riverside Rib House and liked what he saw and smelled, but it was on the other side of the park when we got back together at 5pm. Buckshot Annie’s Skillet Cookery, also tempting, was even further off, so we settled for Wagon Works. At 5pm, it was one hour to closing, but Bob’s request, Steak on an Axle, didn’t fly because they’d run out of steak. Instead, he ordered the half-pound BBQ pulled-pork burger on a big bun. The smoked turkey chipotle wrap I had my heart set on only half flew. No more Anaheim chili peppers, but I had them substitute red onion slices. The wrap itself was on the dry side, and the tomato slices were pale pink and tasteless. But the Chuckwagon steak and bean soup (the only thing they had left with steak in it) we shared, in a sourdough bread bowl, was steaming hot and quite good. Sodas were outrageously expensive: $2.59 for the smallest cup, with no refills. Forget it! Lesson learned: Better eat in mid-afternoon, before they start to run out. But the food filled us up, and the accompanying live ragtime music was enjoyable, including the old guy who accompanied pianist Don on wooden clackers.

After the tram dropped us off at the Silver Dollar City entrance and we paid admission, we were handed a map and entertainment schedule. A cursory glance revealed that there were 14 performance areas. Some of the bigger special events were a Musical Journey with Lewis and Clark, Tastes of America, with live music and barn dancing, and a 90-minute evening show, "Hot Rods and Hairdos", with cast of 19 at Echo Hollow Amphitheater. We didn’t see those, but we stumbled across quite a bit of entertainment during the course of the day: on Main Street, a mini-tractor parade, followed by mule-jumping contest; on nearby Gazebo Stage, Shirley Goodness and Mercy performing bluegrass, gospel, and folk; Cowboy Steve Mitchell (who looks like W.C. Fields) on the outdoor Medicine Wagon Stage; and serenading us with honky-tonk piano while we ate at Wagon Works Grill, Ragtime Don French. That doesn’t include solitary musicians playing as they strolled along and glimpses into various barns, stages, and establishments where live music was being sung and played. Most performers have multiple shows throughout the day, and you can just walk right in and watch.

Marvel Cave: A 90-minute tour of Marvel Cave is included in the cost of park admission. I wanted to take the tour, but there was so much to see and do above ground that time ran out. Other, lesser attractions were walking across the Swinging Bridge (very mild swaying—you don’t even need to hold on) and going through Grandfather’s Mansion, kind of a rinky-dink funhouse. But those mirrors that make people look skinny are encouraging.

Homestead Ridge is the site of a small frontier village, including fully furnished cabins, a barnyard, school, and wilderness church with picture windows viewing the adjacent forest. One of the cabins and the church are authentic old structures the Herschend family hauled in and reconstructed when starting Silver Dollar City in 1960.

Wild Rides include Wildfire, a looping "cobra" roller coaster, and American Plunge log-flume, where you will get wet on your 35-mph splash down from five-story height. WaterWorks Waterboggan and Thunderation, a runaway mine train ride, were closed.

Activities for younger kids are concentrated in certain areas of Silver Dollar City. Geyser Gulch along Riverfront Road appeals to kids of all ages. Some high-power squirt hoses in two locations opposite each other at Splash Harbor could easily escalate into a water war to remember. I’m sure they get more use on hot summer days. Tom Sawyer’s Landing, with ropes, netting, and Huck’s Fort on top, seemed to be a kids’ favorite. My favorite kids’ activity was the three-story giant "treehouse", with some really fascinating toys. The central activity in this open-beamed netted area (sounds dangerous, but when seen, looks safe) was the potential for a war of rubber balls, shot from mounted guns. A giant squiggly xylophone and multi-colored chimes beg to be played. But the sun was getting low on the horizon, and I’d promised to meet Bob in front of Wagon Works Grill.

It all started with a cave. Osage Indians knew of it as long ago as the 1500s, when they lived here, and they reportedly believed it was home to spirits of beasts of prey. It became called "Devil’s Den" and was avoided. In 1869, Henry Blow, St. Louis mining magnate, explored the cave and renamed it "Marble Cave," believing one wall to be composed of marble. In 1882, T. Hodges Jones of Barton County bought the property and began mining copious amounts of bat guano from the cave. But the "marble" wall was actually limestone, and once the guano was gone, no other valuable minerals were found. After 1889, the cave changed ownership several times as attempts were made to turn it into a tourist attraction, and its named was changed to Marvel Cave. Enter the Herschend family from Winnetka, Illinois. They introduced a train to carry tourists out of the cave and reconstructed a small frontier village around the cave’s mouth: five shops, a church, a log cabin, and daily reenactments of the Hatfield-McCoy family feud. So began Silver Dollar City in 1960.

Nowadays, Herschend Family Entertainment runs the park, so it’s still in the family, but it’s merely a part of a sprawling empire that also includes Showboat Branson Belle and Celebration City theme park in Branson. They’re operating partners with Dolly Parton of Branson’s Dixie Stampede and Dollywood in Tennessee. And Silver Dollar City is now much bigger.

Old-Time Skills My favorite part of this park was watching the artisans and craftspeople practicing their old-time skills. It’s very educational and a wonderful way for kids to learn about lots of traditional crafts, about which most 21st-century youngsters don’t have a clue. At the wool spinning, dyeing, and weaving area, you learn that sheep were brought into the Ozarks along with the settlers in the 1800s, and dyes were made from local plants such as indigo, madder roots, and Osage orange. Just-dyed yarns are hanging over the fence in a rainbow of colors. The woman who’s dyeing the wool is sweating in her long skirts, sleeves rolled up, as steam from the boiling vats wafts around her. A couple of penned sheep rest behind her.

What is a "steam donkey?" It’s a boiler, steam engine, and sled, not a four-legged mammal. You can learn how these awkward-looking contraptions were used in Ozarks logging. A stationary one is in use to power the duplicating lathe, at which a hard-working man, wood shavings in his beard, toils. Lathe products include baseball bats and walking sticks. Wandering up and down the crooked hilly streets, I paused to view basket-weaving, broom-making, hand woodcarving, blacksmithing, and a steamy cooperage manned by a sturdy white-bearded cooper. Nearby, a man was stirring a dark substance in a one of the very barrels made by the cooper. Cider, apples, sugar, and cinnamon and lots of stirring make the finished product: apple butter. Some of the crafts I missed were glass-blowing, pottery-making, and wheel-making.