298 miles from Billings, Montana, taking the turn off I-90 at Whitehall, to head south toward Salt Lake City, you'll pass through the town of Dell, Montana. I've stopped there a couple of times on our trips to see the kids in Las Vegas. Dell is about 300 miles from SLC.
The "Dell Mercantile Store" and U. S. Post Office is a good place to stop for a cup of coffee and a snack. It's a classic "general store" with all sorts of souvenirs, hunting caps and clothes, and very clean restrooms! My wife pointed out there's an Eleanor Roosevelt quote artistically inscribed on the wall of the women's restroom: A woman is like a teabag...you never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water.
On one of our future trips we must forego our usual Olive Garden lunch stop in Idaho Falls (103 miles away) and dine at a very unique restaurant, located a few steps across the Union Pacific tracks from the Dell Merc. As you can see on the photo below, this place has a unique name; it used to be a one-room, red-brick schoolhouse. Looks and feels like the friendliest place you might find anywhere and I bet the food is plentiful and delicious. "Good cookin', lotsa' lookin'" is there motto and there is much schoolhouse memorabilia to inspect. For some of you, lots of memories will be stimulated; I know this happened to the Mrs., whose first formal educational experience was in a one-room school on the south-central North Dakota plains.
As you can see by the sign, they call this restaurant "CALF-A." The menu is written on the schoolhouse's old chalkboard. At last report, they're open seven days a week, from 7:00 A.M. to 9:00 P.M., 8:00 P.M. on Sundays. Next time I get out there, I have to ask why they call it what they do; strange way of spelling "cafe."
As I mentioned, to get to the restaurant, you drive or walk across the U.P. tracks that reminded me of the 1955 movie Bad Day at Black Rock, starring Spencer Tracy. Watch the movie and see if my photo below doesn't "feel" like the movie's location.
