Back from Branson

 Last week my family and I spent the week in Branson, MO. We chose to stay at a VRBO condo to minimize any potential contact with other guests (like we would see in a hotel). We were a bit concerned at the start of the trip - we did carry out pizza the first night and walked in to pick up the pizza and the 3 customers (2 others plus myself) were all masked but out of the 7 or 8 employees, there was only 1 mask. We did find out that Branson had implemented a mask order on July 31st, so those employees should have been wearing a mask. The rest of the restaurants we frequented during the week were all masked up and had signs telling people to wear masks.

Early in the week we went to a show in a theater. People wore their masks coming into the show, but the majority of people took them off when they sat down. I would say the theater was around 15% full. There was nobody in our row and nobody directly in front of or behind us. There were groups in the row in front of us to either side, and they weren't wearing their masks, so my wife and I kept ours on the entire show more to protect ourselves since others weren't as worried about protecting those around them.

We went to Silver Dollar City one day and they had people taking temperatures on entry and lots of hand sanitizer and signage and all the employees were in masks. Most patrons were wearing masks, although there were some that were wearing "chin guards" and they stood out.

We did some shopping late in the week and all the shops had mask signs and most people wore masks. Overall, it felt fairly safe after that first couple of nights. Attendance in the city overall seemed low, but it was also late August (after many schools have opened) which could have something to do with the attendance.