Anything you want

It is not true that you can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant.

You can’t get a table for one, gluten-free bread, or refills on the lemonade.  You also are probably not going to get directions from the attendant at the store, who does not speak English, unless you know what language he does speak and can converse in it well enough to ask if there is another way down the mountain.  In addition, you can’t enter through the wheelchair ramp (or at least, not unless I’ve been there and explained the ADA to the lady who monitors it) or substitute anything for the inevitable bag of chips.

You can, however, get a reasonably tasty portabella mushroom sandwich (don’t eat the bread and it’s gluten-friendly) with sauteed red peppers and avocado.  For a hefty additional charge, you can get the appetizer sweet potato fries.  Judging by the gentleman on the stool next to mine (“One?  Did you try the counter?”), you can get an extraordinarily juicy beefburger the size of a newborn’s head.  You can get any flavor of ice cream as long as the flavor you want is vanilla, and any float as long as it’s rootbeer.  You can indulge in a fabulous forty-five minutes of people-watching, complete with every motorcyclist not in Sturgis.

If you head north outside of the Alice’s Restaurant parking lot, you find the gentle, meandering road which rides the ridge to the eastern route back to 280.  Along the way, you can stop for pictures, though unfortunately, by this time, your phone will have died and you’ll have to rely on memories.  As you float downhill to the interstate, you find that you  have, in fact, gotten what you wanted after all.

And in that state of grace, you drift to Philz Coffee, where you can get any coffee drink you want, as long as it’s pour-over.

 

To see where I’ve been, click HERE and HERE.

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