08 July 08 - 20:52
Moving Backwards
Inertia was powerful yesterday morning. The urge to sit and do nothing was strong enough to win out for awhile but I finally shifted into gear and got ready for a shower. Unfortunately, I forgot that when the black water tank is nearly full the fresh water tank is often nearly empty. I got my hair washed and rinsed and my body soaped before the water ran out. It's a good thing I don't travel alone! I was able to sit and shiver while Dave filled the water tank and I waited for it to heat. It's amazing just how cold water fresh from underground can be!That experience deserved a reward so we went to Lula Belle's for lunch. This is a tiny restaurant recommended by a local woman who did a program on Gillette's Rowdy History for about 300 Escapees during the Escapade. We arrived right at noon and the parking lot was full so we decided to go pick up our mail first.
This was our first experience picking up mail sent to General Delivery at a post office. It was just like picking up mail held at home while you are on vacation. Walk in with your driver's license in hand and walk out with your mail.
Then back to Lula Belle's. There was parking available so we went in and found several empty tables. Since this place only seats about 30 people it was nice to have a choice of tables. They soon filled up again. You can tell this is a place where the locals eat because when you walk in everyone looks up to see who is arriving. The servers don't assume you want a menu, either, but they do offer you one if they don't recognize you. We were much too late to get one of their popular cinnamon rolls but they still had homemade pies. That took me back to when my grandma made pies for a living. We got the last piece of banana meringue—unusual but good! They said they had had a busy week what with all those RV people from the convention coming in. I'm glad we waited until today when most of the Escapees had already left town before we tried to get in to this place. The place was also too small to have a non-smoking section but their air circulation system worked so well I don't think I would have known anyone was smoking if I hadn't seen them doing it; I liked that a lot.
Now that we'd been fortified for traveling it was finally time to hit the road for the day. We needed to head back to Rapid City where we could get someone to look at our transmission to find out why it was acting like someone learning to drive a stick shift.
On the way there, I saw a billboard
indicating beer has climbed on the 100 calorie snack bandwagon. It
said, “Budweiser Select 99 calories 0 grams fat.” Not my choice
of snack but Dave occasionally likes a cool on on a hot day so it's
good know to know he can do it for only 99 calories. :)
In Rapid City we shopped. Target to get a memory foam pad for the bed. And WalMart for groceries.
Then to T.G.I. Friday's for supper. A taste of home. Friday's is part of the Carlson Company's hospitality group which was founded and is still headquartered in Plymouth, MN. The late Curt Carlson and his daughter Marilyn Carlson Nelson are the only CEOs I've actually met. We are fond of several of Friday's dishes. Last night we had baby back ribs. I always order a salad to eat first so I can have leftover ribs. I ate more of them later in the evening and I still have some left. What a treat!
As we drove through downtown Rapid city heading towards the campground we'd picked, we saw a sign for the National Unicycle Convention and, sure enough, there were several people riding them in the area. I wish I'd been quick enough with my camera to get a picture or two.
Finally, we pulled into the Lazy J campground. It's much nicer than the Flying J campground. :) For those of you not in the know, Flying J is a truck stop that let's RVs stay free overnight so it's popular with those trying to get to some place in particular who can sleep through the noise of the trucks. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I'm not sure which, that's not us—yet.
TTYL,
Linda
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