Saturday, July 18th, 1998 was our first day on the road. Our destination was The Roadway Inn Motel, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It’s a suite of extended stay motels. My daughter and I decided to take my dad on a road trip down memory lane. My dad still had the directions that my mom had written from a prior family trip from the 1970’s. Since this trip was specifically for my dad, we had some stops to make. Driving through miles and miles of corn stocks and what seemed like hundreds of towns, we finally arrived at our hotel in Woodstock MN. As kids, my dad and his brothers spent most of their summers at Grandma’s farmhouse and cousin Lyle’s house. Through mine and my daughter’s eyes, it appeared to be nothing more than a ghost town, but for my dad, he says "Everything is pretty run down now, but it used to be a lively town." He directed us to his Grandma’s house, (my great-grandmother) a run down shack with weeds that reached over your head. We headed to Lyle’s old house. My daughter and I had to laugh, my dad got out of the car, went up to the door and started knocking. When no one answered, he pulls the screen door open to step inside. He yells "Anybody home?" as he notices a pair of women’s slippers on the porch, he says "There’s got to be someone here." At that point I said "Dad, come here, you can’t just walk in a strange house." He mumbles back "They left the door unlocked, it’s okay to do that around here."

We also stopped at the graveyard to see Gramma, Lyle, aunt Minnie, her husband and also "little two-year-old Charlie’s grave." It was interesting – you could tell that dad was getting a little emotional. The day was pretty warm but livable. Our next pit stop was Pipestone MN, dad says "a lot of history here" but to me and my daughter it didn’t seem like much. But it was important for dad to see. We stopped at a really nice Luxury Hotel to use the bathroom. I can see why it was called a "Luxury Hotel" by the looks of the bathroom. Pretty fancy.

Heading SW., toward the Rodeway Inn Motel in Sioux Falls S.D. the weather was getting warmer. We had already driven a long way and we were hungry and tired. We arrived at the Roadway Inn Motel at about 7:30 p.m. Nicole (my daughter) had one of her headaches, and I really felt bad for her. Dad and I went to the sports bar and grill which was right next door to the motel. His foot was kind of sore but he wanted to walk over. Nicole napped in the motel room, and of course we brought food back to her. As dad & I had dinner, the lights were flickering and it was kind of noisy. Then it hit, BIG thunderstorms, windy and raining it came down in buckets. We got back to our motel room at the Roadway Inn, as Nicole was watching out the window she thought everything was going to blow over including the motorcycles parked in the motel parking lot.

tags | extended stay motels | luxury hotel | inn | motel

Continue to part 2 of extended stay motels and hotels travel stories