Suebob's Red Stapler

I love modern life. I can go pretty much anywhere in the world, forearmed with knowledge that I won’t be sharing my lodgings with scorpions unless the internet says I will.

Scorpions? Seriously. My grandparents told tale of a road trip to northern Mexico in the 1920s where their hotel room walls were covered with creepy, crawly, poison scorpions. I can’t even sleep without an eye mask and the perfect pillow. Imagine the comforting night’s sleep I’d get while sharing my room with poisonous insects.

I had my own pre-internet hotel/motel adventures, as I’m sure most people did. Tell me your worst lodging stories in the comments section. I love to hear them.

I remember a cheap motel in Denver that stank so badly of cigarette smoke that when I took my nightgown out the next night 500 miles down the road, a wave of rank grey smell came floating out with it.

Or the formerly quaint, now kinda Shining-level scary hotel in California’s Gold Country where there were 2 options: a room RIGHT above the bar, where Bob Seger music blasted at about 110 decibels, or a room that had apparently not been aired out since Eisenhower was president. It also had a bed that was on bedsprings…let me find a photo, because most people in the modern era have never seen this…

Ha. The only photo I could find shows the bedstead being used as a BBQ. But you get the idea:

Photo by Aroid. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Every time my partner (who was in a great deal of trouble, because he had promised to make hotel reservations and hadn’t, leaving us stuck with the only available rooms in town) or I moved an inch, the metal springs creaked out a loud, rusty song.

I could go on…but seriously, traveling was scary. You pulled into a town, took a peek around and tried to determine from the motel’s facade and general state of appearance whether you were going to find a clean, comfortable room, or whether a Night of Living Hell awaited you.

And if you did have a terrible stay, what could you do? Argue over the bill? Tell all your friends that if they ever happened to be in Salina, Kansas that they should avoid the Dew Drop Inn? (No idea whether there is a Dew Drop Inn in Salina or if it is habitable. Just exampling.)

So I’m so glad to have the internet, with its passionate travelers, to give me an advance peek into potential lodgings. TripAdvisor.com is my choice of review sites, but Yelp will work, too. I don’t know why I usually use Trip Advisor for hotels and Yelp to find great places to eat…it’s just how I do.

I pay it back, too, posting reviews and photos of places I stay and restaurants. As every statistician knows, sample size matters, so the more the merrier.

On this trip, thanks to Trip Advisor’s “Best Value” button, we found two great deals on two humble but clean motels. I can tell you that Mrs. Lin at the Sundown Inn in Morro Bay runs a tight ship. She owns the place and does everything, including housekeeping, and I have to thank God that she’s a much better housekeeper than I am. It was CLEAN. For $49 a night, I was pretty skeptical, but I’m a convert now.

The internet has taken some of the adventure and romance out of travel, for sure. True surprises are harder and harder to find. But it has also taken out scorpions and cigarette reek, so, for me, it’s a fair trade.

The night before I was leaving for a trip with my two friends, my mom asked “Are you packed?”

“No, I’ll do it later,” I said.

“When are you meeting CC and Ish?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. I knew we were leaving on Tuesday – we had talked about that when we made motel reservations about six weeks before. But we hadn’t discussed the trip since.

Mom shook her head. “Your dad would have a heart attack,” she said.

She’s right. In spite of Dad’s insistence on planning every detail of a trip weeks in advance, or maybe because of it, I prefer to leave things hanging as much as possible and just see what happens.

I learned my lesson when I went to Kauai for 8 days. I got the Kauai guidebook. I studied every map and memorized every attraction. I knew which restaurants were good and which weren’t – according to the book.

When I got to Kauai, I had an agenda. I was determined to stick to my plans, come hell or high water. This explains how I found myself drenched with rain, fishing in glass-slick mud that came up to my knees, trying to retrieve my flip-flops that had been sucked off my feet in the thick red goo. The guidebook said that the trail led to an unmissable scenic spot, and dammit, I was going to see the scenic spot, even if I slid on my butt all the way down the muddy trail to the ocean and then had to grip tree trunks to keep my balance on my way back up.

That trip broke me of travel planning. Now I do the minimum. When I went to Oaxaca, Mexico for 3 weeks, I didn’t read anything about it before I went there. I knew it was historic and beautiful and had an airport. That was enough for me. People started telling me about cool stuff to see even before I landed there. No guidebook necessary.

Costa Rica was the same way. My BFF CC went before me and found a place to stay. Then we bumbled our way across the country, clueless and enjoying every minute.

I like to travel anywhere. I just enjoy waking up somewhere different and going out to find out what it is all about. I try to pack well and to remember the things I need, but if I don’t, I can make do or buy what I need.

I talked to CC and Ish that night. We made a plan to meet up at 10 am. That was all the plans we needed.