{IKES! I missed a post from 2016! I’m going to blame it on wonky wifi connections…. believing it had successfully uploaded when it didn’t…. I’d retro-date this posting if I could, but rather than skip it entirely… here it is, with my apologies!}
While visiting Theodore Roosevelt National Park July of 2016, we stayed in Medora, a little touristy-town at the main gate of the park.
Maybe my impressions would have been more positive if I’d been in better shape to walk, because we only ducked into one store, ate at two restaurants (and one wasn’t any good).
So what ranked and what didn’t?
One of the local places that supposedly had a lot of charm and “local flavor” was the Cowboy Cafe. My first instincts were to turn around and try someplace else, but sometimes the plainest places serve the best food. And the decor did match the cowboy theme, with photos of cowboys on the walls and cattle brands burned into the wooden benches:
Bob’s buffalo burger was gray…
…and my fish? Well, it was hard to find any fish under all the thick, crusty breading:
We didn’t go back and wouldn’t recommend it.
We did find Theodore’s restaurant after some searching (it was in the Rough Riders hotel), and ate there on my birthday.
There special was a shrimp dish that was supposed to be spicy but wasn’t (at least not to us)…
…but my macaroni and cheese was pretty good (a bit bland, but not bad):
Of course, in our book, any place we can find a fresh spinach salad (and this one with strawberries) is one we’re bound to return to…
…and we did, the next day. I ordered the fish sandwich with waffle fries:
Bob ordered the burger with french fries…
…and we shared the spinach salad, which, we could tell, had been prepared by someone else (can you see the difference, too?):
But what I’ll probably remember the most about this little town on the edge of wilderness so special even Teddy Roosevelt decided to call it home for awhile (hence the name of the national park), is the RV park neighbor who found a unique way to hang onto all those old hats he didn’t want to wear anymore, but just couldn’t quite part with:
He had enough hats to adorn his corner property:
There might have been some other meaning to these hats — one was from a cafe in Medora, Kansas, so perhaps a theme was in play. My still-swollen ankle kept us from walking the fence line to check out the details… perhaps one of you knows?!?
