Restaurants

by

Keystone, SD, to Scobey, MT

The Black Hills region really is a tricky one to visit. It’s just not a safe bet in the shoulder season. I’m lucky that I got a good day for Mount Rushmore and will only return to the area if I can afford time off in the dead of summer. I do not regret my detour in the least though since it meant meeting Vicki, getting work done, and, of course, seeing Mount Rushmore. Oh, and eating amazing free food, too! 🙂

It was raining so hard in Keystone today that the bridge between the main road and the camping area was closed for fear that it would get under water! A local guy showed me an alternate way out, a little rough, but doable in the truck. I was worried that that would wash out, too, so once I knew about the bridge closure, I was in departure mode!

I’d emptied a lot of the truck so I could transport passengers, so I had the fun task of refilling it in pouring rain today. Let’s just say I didn’t care to make it neat and tidy! I was done by about 10:30 and it was time to go since the rain wasn’t letting up and I was taking the flooding warnings seriously. It was almost 20 fake degrees warmer in northern Montana/southern SK and clear skied so, really, there really was no point in hanging around.

I headed to Rapid City and did a pointless Walmart stop since they didn’t have what I wanted. I then continued on to Spearfish, where I decided to get lunch. I haven’t been to Applebee’s at all on this trip, so I stopped there, but there was a huge lineup. I instead went to a Perkins across the interstate and had a pot of coffee and a burger. The server told me I had to order dessert and was very insistent about it, so I decided to try their chocolate pie. The bill came with the slice and as it turned out, they had a coffee and pie special that meant that my meal was about 30 cents LESS expensive with my buying the pie than if I hadn’t! Too funny. I didn’t feel guilty for leaving most of it behind as it was way too sweet, but the couple of mouthfuls I had were a treat.

Then, I drove in incessant pouring rain. So much water… But I could see a clearing to the north and I finally got patches of blue sky and white clouds as I approached Miles City, Montana. The weather remained fairly clear until just shy of Glendive where the sky let loose again. The rain was falling so hard I knew it couldn’t possibly last, and it didn’t. The rest of the drive was in increasingly clear and warm weather. It was about 70 fake degrees when I pulled in Scobey, versus about 50 in Keystone!

Coming into Scobey, gas was foremost on my mind. With tomorrow being a holiday Monday, I knew I had about a 0% chance of being able to get gas in Coronach and about a -100% chance of being able to do so in Willow Bunch. I didn’t think I had quite enough to be able to get to Assiniboia on Tuesday, so, really, I had to find fuel tonight. Moreover, I much preferred to fill up on cheap US gas! But this was late on a Sunday night in a small town, so I had a feeling the gas station would be closed. It technically wasn’t… but it’s pay at the pump place and it’s difficult to pay at the pump with a Canadian card at most stations. I swiped my Visa and was relieved that it was approved immediately! That done, it was time to find a bed for the night.

There are two places to stay in Scobey. The first wanted $86 for a room. PASS. The next wanted $58, more than I wanted to pay, but not enough to make me want to find a place to sleep with the truck and reorganize everything to clear the bed. The ‘room’ is hilarious. It’s actually a two-bedroom suite! You walk into the main room and there is a bed, dresser, etc. Then there is another bedroom with a fridge and microwave. The hallway has a big closet, then there is a bathroom! The suite even has a proper desk and computer chair!!!

By the time I lugged in my valuables, I realised that my noontime burger was very far away and I was actually feeling a little faint. I asked the motel lady about the odds of there being a place open for dinner and she said the restaurant nearly right next door was open till 10:00! I went and spent my last $20 in cash on a beer, steak, and baked potato. Yes, it was a big restaurant day, but it’s back to reasonableness tomorrow, what with Canadian food prices and all. 🙂

Time for bed. I want to be on the road by 7:30 tomorrow so I can be at the border for its 8:00 o’clock opening. I only have 60 miles to go to home and Google claims that will take two hours. Unless the border crossing is disastrous, Google is being ridiculous!

 

 

 

by

Himalayan Indian Cuisine, Keystone, South Dakota

My friend and host Vicki is working in the Black Hills tourism industry this summer, as is another friend of hers. They were doing their thing last night when a local restaurateur invited them ‘and a friend’ to his restaurant today for a free meal in exchange for a review on sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor and, of course, letting tourists know about his restaurant. Lucky for him, the friend they invited is a travel blogger!

The restaurant is Himalayan Indian Cuisine and it is located in the Keystone Mall in Keystone, just a couple of miles from Mount Rushmore. I’m not familiar with the cuisine from that part of the world, so I was eager to try it.

Exterior of Himalayan Indian Cuisine restaurant.

Exterior of Himalayan Indian Cuisine restaurant.

Simple, clean decor.

Simple, clean decor.

We showed up around noon and were greeted warmly. We asked for suggestions and took them, ordering three main dishes as well as an order of plain naan (flat bread) as well as garlic and cilantro naan that we could all share.

These are the dishes we ordered:

1) Vegetable korma: Mixed vegetables and paneer (fresh cheese) cooked with creamy onion sauce and garnished with cashew and coconut powder:

Vegetable korma

Vegetable korma

This had really good flavour and texture. I don’t think the gals were wowed by it, but it’s just because one of the other dishes was so insanely good that it overshadowed everything else. I really enjoyed the vegetable korma and how the sauce seeped into the rice. It was also good mopped up with naan!

2) Tandoori chicken: bone-in marinated chicken leg with onions and peppers

This didn’t feel exotic to me to the way the vegetable korma did. The chicken was very flavourful and tender, with a flavour and bright red colour that I was not accustomed to. It came on a hot grill, the way fajitas come.

Tandoori chicken with onions and peppers.

Tandoori chicken with onions and peppers.

3) Chicken tikka masala: chicken breast cooked in a creamy tomatoey sauce with spices I’d never had before that made it a little sweet. This was our absolute favourite. We pretty much fought over the bowl to mop up the last dregs of the sauce!

Chicken tikka masala.

Chicken tikka masala.

Our meal came with unlimited basmati rice:

basmati rice

basmati rice

And, of course, we had the naan (this is the garlic and cilantro one, I forgot to photograph the plain one):

Garlic and cilantro naan.

Garlic and cilantro naan.

We piled rice on our plates and then added the saucey goodness over top:

Rice and saucy stuff, yum!

Rice and saucy stuff, yum!

The food was so good!!! It had such flavour and was very fresh. Prices were reasonable, too, about $15 per dish, and naan was a couple of dollars.

If you’re heading to Mount Rushmore this summer, do yourself a favour and stop in Keystone for some Himalayan Indian Cuisine instead of visiting the overpriced American restaurants that dot the region. I can’t believe I discovered new flavours in a tourist trap town like Keystone. Thank you so much to the owner for an invitation that was a treat and a blessing!

by

Walsenburg, CO, to Cheyenne, WY

There really isn’t anything interesting to report about today, I’m afraid. If you were planning to go to bed soon, keep reading as I’m sure you’ll fall asleep halfway through. 😀

I stayed at the Anchor Motel in Walsenburg and it was a great stay. The room was $50 with the tax. The motel is located at the quiet end of Main Street so there was almost no road noise. The room was very dark and the bed nearly as comfortable as the one in John’s RV. I only slept six hours straight through, but they were solid hours, and then I snoozed for another two and a half. 🙂 The room itself was neat, clean, and not worn or shabby even though it hadn’t been updated in my lifetime, I’m sure (except for that mattress!). I like that it had a proper desk and chair and that the shower was hot with good pressure.

The only negative was that they didn’t offer coffee. I did a quick Google search and found a coffee shop a couple of blocks away. I drove because it was pouring rain. The lady working the shop was a complete flake, but the coffee and scone were both excellent.

I didn’t leave till nearly 10:30 since I wasn’t doing too much mileage today. I had to drive through downtown Walsenburg and wished the weather would have been nicer as I would have stayed for a bit to poke through the antique shops, but it was definitely not weather for walking around. The streets were deserted, it was just that nasty and miserable.

I bought fuel before getting on I-25 and then headed north. By 11:30, I was ready for another coffee and getting peckish. So when I passed near Pueblo a sign for a Cracker Barrel, my guilty pleasure, I decided to stop for lunch. Service was unbelievably slow because the restaurant was packed, but my server was attentive, the coffee kept coming, and I had a full charged phone with good service, so I didn’t care.

Next stop was the Walmart in Colorado Springs because the forecast for the weekend is just more and more wet and I needed at the very least some waterproof footwear and hoped to find a fleece hoodie and some sort of waterproof windbreaker. I found a really cute pair of rubber booties for $15, but struck out on outerwear. They only had summer stuff. I didn’t think to check the time and headed to a Target, where I struck out, too. It was only as I was about to head to JC Penney’s that I thought to look at the clock and realised that at the rate I was going, I was going to hit Denver at 3:00, right at the start of rush hour! Moron!

By this point, I was so deep into Colorado Springs and away from I-25 that I had to drive 15KM to get back on it, so I got a chance to see quite a bit of the town. It’s really nothing special. The name Colorado Springs features on two favourite TV shows of mine, Dr. Quinn and Stargate, but of course those Colorado Springs have nothing to do with reality. I’ve been to the Stargate Colorado Springs; it looks suspiciously like the Greater Vancouver Area. 😀

From Target, I hurried back to the truck and drove and drove and drove, not daring to take any time to stop even though I passed a Cabela’s where I could have gotten what I needed.

Heading out of Colorado Springs into Denver.

Heading out of Colorado Springs into Denver.

Traffic through Denver was thick and slow, but fluid, and I made it through in 30 minutes flat. Phew! Only the scenery around the city looked familiar to me after 20 years. There was a bit of clearing and a wisp of blue sky past Denver, but it didn’t last.

Castle Rock.

Castle Rock.

I pushed on from Denver, with the plan being to stop in Cheyenne for the night. That was as far as I was willing to go tonight and it would mean a reasonable day tomorrow to Mount Rushmore.

Something tells me the Wyoming border is approaching.

Something tells me the Wyoming border is approaching.

I was right. :)

I was right. 🙂

It started to sleet heavily as I crossed the Wyoming state line. I pulled into the rest area to do some motel research and found the pickings dire. There is tons of accommodation, but it’s firmly divided between luxury accommodation and roach motels with barely any middle ground. I read recent review after recent review of motels in the $70 range that are the cheapest in the area pricewise and have bedbugs and other major issues. It looked like my two best options were the iffy Motel 6 (middling reviews) and the Super 8 (great reviews, but pricey at over 100USD. Yes, for a Super 8!!!).

I came into town and checked a couple of the better reviewed non-chain motels and they were terrifying! The cheapest one I could find was $75 and I’m not sure I would have used the bathroom! I went to the Motel 6, which was $50 and right on budget, but there were four people ahead of me in line complaining about their rooms. So I headed to the Super 8 and was quoted $83 with the tax, much better than the online rate, and it includes a basic breakfast of toast, fruit, and coffee. I really wasn’t happy dropping 100CAD, but I was done shopping for a bed and the room was nice and about as far from the railroad tracks as I can hope to be.

There were no food options period within walking distance (which I would have done even in the sleet to avoid getting back in my truck), so I resigned myself to either not eating or doing more driving, neither option being particularly appealing. I searched for pizza and found a Little Caesar’s 10 minutes away, so that was perfect. I made it there without incident and they had my favourite $5 pizza (sausage) ready, so I took that as a sign that I’d made the right dinner choice!

I got back to the motel and called Zenni Optical between slices of pizza. My latest order is taking a bit longer than usual to process, so it won’t make it to Mount Rushmore by Friday, as I had hoped. I was able to have the shipping addressed changed to home, so now I don’t have to worry about having the order sent on to me by reader and host Vicki.

I’m so close to home I can almost smell it… I am really glad to be taking in the Black Hills this weekend and still want to make the relatively minor detour there, but wish the weather was looking better so I could enjoy my stay more. I’m getting to Mt. Rushmore later tomorrow afternoon and will be working Thursday and Friday. Vicki, a friend of hers, and I are going to do touristy stuff over the weekend, including Mt. Rushmore and the town of Deadwood. Monday, it’s off to Devils Tower and then an overnight in Scobey. I can’t believe I’ll be home this day next week.

by

Santa Fe, NM, to Walsenburg, CO

I’ve decided to split my day up into two posts. The more interesting one will follow. 🙂

Unfortunately, I got to bed very late last night, a combination of having dinner with John (I cooked and he can attest to the fact that I can cook, even with a very limited pantry! 🙂 ) and the File From Hell that would not finish. So it was a slow and molassy kind of morning for me. My to-do list felt daunting — finish packing up the fifty billion bags I brought into the rig, schlep them all the way to my truck and repack it (John fixed my tailgate again, btw, THANK YOU!!!), and then clean the rig and throw on laundry. Of course, it all came together very quickly. I was ready to pull out at about 9:30, an hour and a half later than I would have liked, but still a half hour ahead of my ‘this is the absolute latest I want to leave’ hour.

John and I both tried to figure out how long I’d been there and drew a blank. I later figured out it was 12 days!!!. My Santa Fe stay really felt like a moment out of time. I am really grateful to have been there as it enabled me to recharge my batteries and my bank account a little as well as do loads of touristy stuff. It was definitely time to move on, but John said I was welcome to return if I wanted to tonight since my day’s fun was to be had not very far down the road. It’s nice to feel that welcome. 🙂

After getting fuel, it was time to head to Bandelier National Monument, the subject of my next post.

It's unbelievable the places my life takes me...

It’s unbelievable the places my life takes me…

IMGP1828

Right to Bandelier!

Right to Bandelier!

IMGP1979

After several hours of fun that I am convinced Disney World couldn’t rival, I decided to go to Los Alamos for lunch and a bit of tourism.

Los Alamos has great significance for me. Judy Blume’s book Tiger Eyes was one of the defining stories of my adolescence. I must have retreated to this story set primarily in Los Alamos more than a hundred times. It painted a world that was absolutely alien to me and I promised myself that if I ever was in the area, I would check out the town and its environs.

I thought I’d done my research and that Los Alamos is now open, with no more guard houses and plenty of museums and other touristy things to do. So imagine my surprise when there was a checkpoint coming into the town. A surely woman asked me where I was going. I told her the truth, going downtown to have lunch and visit the museums. “You’re on government property. I need to see your ID,” she replied. I handed her my passport and she told me to turn around and go the way I came. So, that was that for Los Alamos. Can’t say I didn’t try. 🙂 But I did see the canyons that Judy Blume paints so well with words and they were exactly as I expected. I’m not disappointed about not seeing the town as I doubt it would have borne any resemblance to the the 1970’s town she described.

It was then time to head northeast.

Last chance to go back to John's for the night!

Last chance to go back to John’s for the night!

IMGP1982

IMGP1984

I put Mount Rushmore into my GPS and it plotted out the same route I had to I-25 and beyond, so I followed its directions, heading northeast through mountain passes. Traffic was very slow through the tourist town of Taos and I had no desire to stop.

Quesnel Road! I wonder how they pronounce Quesnel here.

Quesnel Road! I wonder how they pronounce Quesnel here.

From the mountains, I eventually emerged into a plateau as I entered Colorado. I went to three places in 1996, Quebec City, Colorado, and New York City. If I had known then that of the three, Colorado is the first one I would return to a second time, I would not have believed it.

IMGP1988

Colorado was looking a lot like Florida the last time I was there. :)

Colorado was looking a lot like Florida the last time I was there. 🙂

Snow capped peaks in the distance.

Snow capped peaks in the distance.

I didn’t want to drive too much today and hoped to stop around 4:00. But motels were far apart and expensive. I decided that I was stopping in Walsenburg, CO, no matter the prices. By the time I got there around 6:45, I’d seen about four roach motels wanting more than 80CAD a night. Google told me that the average price in Walsenburg was about that. So when the first place I stopped in was clean, neat, and 60CAD, my maximum budget, I was done for the day! BTW, it’s cold and rainy; not truck camping weather at all!

Having done so much exercise today, I needed a proper dinner, so I walked the block to a sit down Mexican restaurant. I ordered a beer (Budweiser!) and wasn’t asked for ID. Mexico officially aged me! 😀 The menu was uninspiring, just your typical ‘Mexican’ and American fare, so I ordered the two enchilada special (opting for chicken with green sauce). It was tasty enough, spicy as hell, and a good deal for the price ($7). The beer brought the tab up to $10.30 with the tax, still a very reasonable price. The enchiladas were topped with cheese, lettuce, tomato, and… black olives. Strange. I started to eat olives last summer and haven’t had them since I left home, so I tried one and didn’t hate it, so I ate them all. 🙂

It was a good day on the road. I could easily get to Mount Rushmore tomorrow, but I’d rather split it up into two or even two and a half days. We’ll see how the weather is. 🙂

by

Not On Vacation

Whew, I just finished a pretty grueling work marathon, with the final lap being particularly brutal. It’s my fault for taking so many afternoons off to go exploring! I usually don’t work like this, taking half days off, preferring to get my work out of the way and then going to have fun, but I’ve been working around the fickle weather. It wasn’t particularly nice out yesterday and it rained all night, but it’s finally cleared a bit.

Today was a taking care of business sort of day. I needed to send something out for warranty replacement, so John’s Printing and Mailing Service dropped off a label I asked him to print, packing material, a box, scissors, and tape. I had my own Magic Marker at least. 😀

John vetoed my choice of post office since it’s just a counter and sent me to a proper one that he promised would have parking. I got there and there were about 15 people ahead of me in line and nearly as many ended up behind me since there was only one guy working the counter. It took almost 15 minutes before someone else showed up to at least process the people just picking up parcels, and then another service counter opened.

Even though I was only returning a small hard drive (barely bigger than a credit card), the box was pretty big to accommodate all the packing material they told me to use. So I was shocked that the cost to mail it was just $7.05. A similar box would have cost $30 to $40 to send a comparable distance within Canada. The clerk actually apologized for it costing so much! WHAT?! I mean, it’s going ‘priority’, which means it should be in Riverside in by Friday and I got a tracking number. What a good deal! I’m glad I didn’t go with UPS, which would  have been $$$. Western Digital gave me a discount for UPS, but it would have still been more than $7.05.

The post office wound up being a very good location since it was very near a mall that had everything else I needed for today, an ATM, a grocery store, and a sushi restaurant. 🙂

After lunch, I was thinking of going downtown to walk around, but the sky looked threatening. I was tired and still have a project left to do for tonight, so I just got my groceries and came home. BTW, I bought beer, assembling a really nice mix of six beers I’ve never tried, and did not get asked for ID for my first time ever buying booze in the States! Smart of me to let the grey hair at my temples grow, huh?!

Tomorrow should be a nice day and I have an excursion planned, thanks to advice from my local guide!