Bowling Around Beautiful... Rapid City

Thursday, March 17, 2016
Rapid City: "City of Presidents"/"President's Walk"/ Historic Downtown Rapid City
Arrived at hotel around 5 pm.

Although I seized the opportunity to visit three bowling centers on my way to Rapid City, the main purpose of going to that area for three nights (Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, returning home Sunday) was to spend some time with my friend - who is not a bowler.

I reached the Days Inn in West Rapid City around 5 pm on Thursday, March 17, 2016. It was cold and windy, but the sun was shining and there was no snow!

I followed the directions from my GPS (an external Garmin that plugs into my cigarette lighter, a few years old that works great) which took me right to the Days Inn on 625 Jackson Boulevard. As I drove down East Saint Joseph Street, I passed through "Historic Downtown Rapid City" and saw a few of the president statues that comprise the President's Walk/City of Presidents.

I parked at the Days Inn and called my friend - and discovered that he'd arrived an hour earlier. So I carried my suitcase up to our room, and unpacked it onto the couch/divan. (Like my friend, we never put our clothes into drawers - too easy to forget things when you leave!)

It was too cold and windy to drive the few blocks back down East Saint Joseph Street to "restaurant row", so we drove. (After my friend - George - pointed out the brontosaurus gazing at us from the bluff just a mile or so away.)

There was plenty of parking on the street at this time - about 5:30 or 6, basically due to the fact that it was March and not really tourist season!

About 100 miles away from Rapid City on SD-79, I started seeing the billboards for Wall Drug, and occasionally a billboard for the Firehouse Winery, each one of which had a bright red fire engine next to the billboard.

Firehouse Winery billboard and firetruck, on SD-79 outside Rapid City

Coming from Minneapolis, my friend had seen the same types of billboards when he got within 100 miles or so of the city.

So, no surprise, that's where we went for dinner that evening. It was located in "Restaurants Row" which is where several of the President statues are also located.

Interior, Firehouse Brewing

The Firehouse Brewing/Winery/Restaurant is located in a former fire station - sadly we weren't allowed to slide down the fire pole - in fact I don't think the fire pole was there. But on the second floor, which was much quieter than the first floor, there was a display of fire fighitng equipment and a fire fighter in homage to the brave male and female fire fighters.

We sat on the tall chairs at the tall tables on the first floor, and it was extremely noisy.

I had a chicken sandwich, can't remember what George had. (Normally I would have taken many more photos and taken a take-out menu to help jog my memory, but this wasn't really the type of trip where I could concentrate on travel-writing details.)

Prior to going to the restaurant, we took a few photos of some of the President's statues, but the sun was going down in such a way that there were shadows making it impossible to get good photos. I decided I'd have to return in a month's time - not only to take photos of all the Presidents but also, of course, to bowl!

John Adams

After we finished eating, we returned to our hotel, and spent the rest of the evening in our room watching TV.