Wednesday, July 26, 2006
travelogue:
DAY TEN Well, we are working our way home! We have driven over 1,000 miles since leaving the Canadian Rockies. Last night we stayed in Dickinson, North Dakota at a Comfort Inn that had a really neat water park. The kids had a blast there! Tonight we are in a suite at another Comfort Inn...this time in Rapid City, South Dakota. (A suite was cheaper than two separate hotel rooms. We have the only balcony...and it overlooks the pool area. The kids thought that was pretty cool, too. Doug worried all day that we might be getting home today. He said he didn't want to ever go home! He wants to spend the rest of his life traveling from one hotel room to the next and swimming every evening. He also frequently tells me he misses his horse...but, I think he is talking about Pete. He has said several times that he wants to go back to Canada...NOW!
Today was a lot of fun... we retraced some of our Honeymoon trip from fifteen years ago! So much in the Black Hills has changed since then. It has gotten a lot more commercialized and there are many more businesses here now...kind of like we have seen Branson change over the years. Grant was planning on us having lunch in Keystone at Smokey's today. That is where we got food poisoning and experienced our first illness together as a married couple! Fifteen years ago, we had been here in early May (before tourist season). Not far from our hotel was a pizza place called "Smokey's". We were pretty much the only ones in the restaurant that first evening in Keystone. Just as we came in, their electricity went out. We thought it was so romantic that we got to eat (from necessity!) by candle light. Not long after, when we were both hanging our heads over the toilet in a decidedly less than romantic fashion, it dawned on us that if their electricity had been going on and off on them all week (as they had mentioned to us) the meat (my chicken, in particular--which Grant helped me finish) might have been a bit bacteria laden. Still, Smokeys held such a sentimental place in our memories, that that is where Grant wanted to go again on this trip (trusting that the food poisoning was a fluke thing!). We found an advertisement flyer offering a coupon for Smokeys at a town earlier today...so, we were hopeful that it still existed. Nope. Smokey's is gone. The building that used to be Smokeys is now American Family Restaurant. We ate there...sitting almost in the same place that we had fifteen years ago! The food was good and no one got sick!
After eating at Smokeys, we tracked down the photo studio where we had taken an old time photo together fifteen years ago. The nephew of the lady who took our photo fifteen years ago, took a photo of the kids and ourselves together today! It has been fun retracing our steps all these years later!
The kids played in the pool for over an hour tonight and now they are watching an old Andy Griffith episode and eating popcorn! It is sad to think that our vacation is almost over. The kids sure did love the pack trip in the Rockies. I really need to write a full account of it...telling the neat things, not just the challenging, frustrating things that I already wrote out! The kids loved riding the horses. Every day while we were there, Doug would beg me, "Ride horsey, Mommy? Ride horsey?" I would assure him that, yes, we were going to ride the horses again and then he would begin begging to put his helmut on. I would try to explain that it wasn't yet time to leave on the horse ride, but he and Rayna both would just be begging to put their helmuts on...feeling, I suppose, that the sooner they got those helmuts on, the sooner we would go saddle up the horses! We will go back and take another Timberline Tour again in a few years. Grant started out (before the pack trip was even over) conceeding that the kids loved it so much that we probably ought to bring them back again sometime, but, stipulated that HE would wait for the kids and I at a hotel. Today, however, he said, "I guess I will have to ride with you again. I would worry too much waiting for you at a hotel." Vonnie and John, however, are ADAMANT that we will NEVER get either one of them on the back of a horse EVER! At least, though, today they can admit that there WERE fun moments in it for them. I think it helps that their soreness is finally wearing off. I have noticed that they are getting no end of delight out of making me feel guilty for having drug them to the Rockies and having 'coerced' them into getting up on those horses! ¶ 7/26/2006 06:32:00 PM
DAY TEN Well, we are working our way home! We have driven over 1,000 miles since leaving the Canadian Rockies. Last night we stayed in Dickinson, North Dakota at a Comfort Inn that had a really neat water park. The kids had a blast there! Tonight we are in a suite at another Comfort Inn...this time in Rapid City, South Dakota. (A suite was cheaper than two separate hotel rooms. We have the only balcony...and it overlooks the pool area. The kids thought that was pretty cool, too. Doug worried all day that we might be getting home today. He said he didn't want to ever go home! He wants to spend the rest of his life traveling from one hotel room to the next and swimming every evening. He also frequently tells me he misses his horse...but, I think he is talking about Pete. He has said several times that he wants to go back to Canada...NOW!
Today was a lot of fun... we retraced some of our Honeymoon trip from fifteen years ago! So much in the Black Hills has changed since then. It has gotten a lot more commercialized and there are many more businesses here now...kind of like we have seen Branson change over the years. Grant was planning on us having lunch in Keystone at Smokey's today. That is where we got food poisoning and experienced our first illness together as a married couple! Fifteen years ago, we had been here in early May (before tourist season). Not far from our hotel was a pizza place called "Smokey's". We were pretty much the only ones in the restaurant that first evening in Keystone. Just as we came in, their electricity went out. We thought it was so romantic that we got to eat (from necessity!) by candle light. Not long after, when we were both hanging our heads over the toilet in a decidedly less than romantic fashion, it dawned on us that if their electricity had been going on and off on them all week (as they had mentioned to us) the meat (my chicken, in particular--which Grant helped me finish) might have been a bit bacteria laden. Still, Smokeys held such a sentimental place in our memories, that that is where Grant wanted to go again on this trip (trusting that the food poisoning was a fluke thing!). We found an advertisement flyer offering a coupon for Smokeys at a town earlier today...so, we were hopeful that it still existed. Nope. Smokey's is gone. The building that used to be Smokeys is now American Family Restaurant. We ate there...sitting almost in the same place that we had fifteen years ago! The food was good and no one got sick!
After eating at Smokeys, we tracked down the photo studio where we had taken an old time photo together fifteen years ago. The nephew of the lady who took our photo fifteen years ago, took a photo of the kids and ourselves together today! It has been fun retracing our steps all these years later!
The kids played in the pool for over an hour tonight and now they are watching an old Andy Griffith episode and eating popcorn! It is sad to think that our vacation is almost over. The kids sure did love the pack trip in the Rockies. I really need to write a full account of it...telling the neat things, not just the challenging, frustrating things that I already wrote out! The kids loved riding the horses. Every day while we were there, Doug would beg me, "Ride horsey, Mommy? Ride horsey?" I would assure him that, yes, we were going to ride the horses again and then he would begin begging to put his helmut on. I would try to explain that it wasn't yet time to leave on the horse ride, but he and Rayna both would just be begging to put their helmuts on...feeling, I suppose, that the sooner they got those helmuts on, the sooner we would go saddle up the horses! We will go back and take another Timberline Tour again in a few years. Grant started out (before the pack trip was even over) conceeding that the kids loved it so much that we probably ought to bring them back again sometime, but, stipulated that HE would wait for the kids and I at a hotel. Today, however, he said, "I guess I will have to ride with you again. I would worry too much waiting for you at a hotel." Vonnie and John, however, are ADAMANT that we will NEVER get either one of them on the back of a horse EVER! At least, though, today they can admit that there WERE fun moments in it for them. I think it helps that their soreness is finally wearing off. I have noticed that they are getting no end of delight out of making me feel guilty for having drug them to the Rockies and having 'coerced' them into getting up on those horses! ¶ 7/26/2006 06:32:00 PM
