Day Four: Medora, North Dakota

I don't know why I had this urge to re-live my childhood family travels. I didn't mean to. Really!

Some things are the same from generation to generation. Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse are always the same. Devil's Tower doesn't change, though I saw that on my own as an adult, and not with my family on the Big Trip of 1977.

But restaurants and hotels? Now it's getting weird.

Yesterday, after forcing the children to walk around Devil's Tower (they were NOT happy) and forcing them to look at but not buy overpriced crap in junk shops in Deadwood (when I really wanted to be drinking beer and gambling there, but one can only manage a small amount of vice when one is with one's children and mother-in-law)...wait, my sentence has gotten all un-gramatic. Yesterday, after all that, we stopped at a restaurant in Spearfish. We had passed up a couple of other places, due to their less than savory appearance. It said it was a family restuarant.

"This used to be a Country Kitchen," I said. "In fact my family went to a Country Kitchen somewhere around here in 1977 and...wait a minute..."

Yep. Same place. The place stuck in my mind because back in 1977 when we were there, the waitress took our order and then disappeared for 40 minutes. When we finally flagged down another waitress, who flagged down a manager, it was discovered that our waitress had gone off-shift and our order had been completely lost. But we eventually got to eat and we were happy.

So yesterday, our order took forever. The manager and the waitress (who this time had NOT gone off-shift) apologized. They were short a cook, but even then it took too long. So I told them it was better than the last time. They thought the story was funny.

They gave the kids free ice cream and cake and took one meal off our tab. We were happy.

Then we drove to where we are now. At the same motel I stayed in with my family in 1977, in Medora.

North Dakota.