Day 1 (2014) - When Buffalo Isn't Buffalo

After a year off, we went back on the road for a (short) road trip.  We only had a week after camp ended before the boys had to be back for the start of soccer practice, so we had to be a little creative with the planning of this trip.  As many of you loyal blog readers may (or may not) know, Debbie has long wanted us to incorporate visiting Mt. Rushmore into our summer trip plans.  One of my versions of our very first trip had us working in a side trip to South Dakota to see Mt. Rushmore, but that was cut out of the final version.  Subsequent trips really didn't lend themselves to going to South Dakota (have you looked on a map to see where South Dakota is?), so it was not an option.  That is, until this time.

With a limited time span for the trip, it made sense to fly someplace instead of driving, especially since we had pretty much exhausted the options for driving directions (first trip headed west, second trip went north and third trip went south - and unless we wanted to drive to London we were out of choices).  So earlier in the summer I started thinking about where we could fly and do something interesting and fun in the 5 days we had.  An early version had us heading to the Wisconsin Dells area for a series of water parks and amusement parks.  As fun as that sounded, we decided that this would be the year we finally saw Mt. Rushmore.  Then the decision was made to avoid long driving and instead fly into Rapid City, SD instead of flying to Denver and driving.  This meant taking a connecting flight, since you can't fly direct to Rapid City from New York.  In a fact, you can't fly direct to Rapid City from many places.  Therefore, our flight took us via Salt Lake City, where we connected on a small plane (13 rows) to Rapid City.  Again, look at a map - Salt Lake City is NOT on the way to Rapid City.

And Away We Go

Anyway, we arrived in beautiful, and warm, South Dakota around 6:30 pm (Mountain Time) on Tuesday. After a very warm experience with the rental car lady, who obviously is not happy with her job, we hopped into our Ford Traverse (a.k.a., The Cube) and headed to the hotel.

"The Cube"

I had decided to stay in Rapid City instead of closer to Mt. Rushmore since there were more choices of hotels.  Sadly, there was no Embassy Suites in Rapid City, so I had booked a room at the Country Inn and Suites.  Many of you know that when we travel we bring an air bed (or two, sometimes) with us so we can all bunk in one room.  When we stay at an Embassy Suites this works out great, since there is at least one real bed (sometimes two queens or doubles) and a pull out couch.  This allows all of us to have our own beds - with the obvious exception of Debbie and me.  However, this hotel uses a very loose interpretation of the word "suite" as the room we had was really nothing more than a regular hotel room.  It had two queens and there was really no room for the air bed, so it was decided that the boys would share a bed and Amanda would sleep with Debbie and me.

Everyone was hungry so we decided to head someplace for dinner.  Debbie and Ethan used their fancy iPhone gizmos (I know, I sound like an old fuddy duddy), and both came up with a restaurant called the Colonial House Restaurant.  We asked the guy at the front desk if the restaurant was good and he said yes and when we asked for directions he said it was just up the street, short of the Walmart.  Well, we headed where he said and there was no sign of the restaurant.  There was a different restaurant around where he said our place would be, so we could only assume he had misunderstood where we wanted to go.  We looked up the address for the Colonial House Restaurant and plugged it into the GPS and were on our way again.  This restaurant was about 10 minutes away, and pretty much all we saw along the way were fast food restaurants and law offices.  Not sure what that means, but it must be related.

We arrived at the address we had in the GPS only to find an empty building with a sign that said "Colonial House Restaurant Coming Soon."  But Debbie and Ethan had seen recent reviews of the restaurant when they were looking up places to eat, so we were very confused.  Debbie looked up the phone number and called them.  Turns out where we were will be the new location of the restaurant and the current location was just a little farther down the street.  We finally arrived at the right place and went in.

Found it!

The food was very good, nothing unusual or special to the area, but the highlight was the dessert.  They are known for the their bakery and had a long list of pies to tempt us.  And who are we to turn down pie?  Ethan went with the key lime, Brian opted for banana cream, Amanda went with chocolate cream and I chose cherry.  Debbie was good (this time) and only had mint tea.  The pies were as good as advertised and there wasn't a crumb left on any of our plates.

Mmmmmm, chocolate cream pie

I am NOT going to pose with my banana cream pie

Me neither, I'm not smiling with my key lime pie

Sweet Cherry Pie

While the meal and dessert were delicious, Brian was a little bummed about one thing though at dinner.  See, Brian is a big fan of Buffalo Wings and anything else Buffalo, like Buffalo chicken pizza, Buffalo chicken wraps, and Buffalo crepes (at Penn's Houston Hall).  So Brian was very excited that there were a bunch of Buffalo items on the menu and as part of the specials.  Only one problem - these Buffalo items were actually buffalo items (lower case b) made out of buffalo meat, not hot sauce.  Every time Brian heard or saw buffalo in the food title there was an initial reaction of joy followed by the disappointing realization that it was the "wrong" buffalo.

After devouring dinner and dessert, we headed back to the hotel to get ready for the big day - visiting Mt. Rushmore!