Tales (of horror) from the Road

We're off on a mini-vacation, driving to Cincinnati for the wedding of two friends. I've been on some pretty horrific road trips and spent the night is some truly scary motels before (a motel in the middle of nowhere eastern Ohio where we were stranded in a snowstorm and were the only people staying there; the hotel at Mammoth Cave in the off season; a Motel 6 in the not-so-nice part of our nation's capital...and those were all on one trip), but last night was the worst yet.

It was getting late and we saw an exit with a number of hotel options. We were in a small town on the western end of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. In the interest of fairness, I'm not going to say where.

My Kentucky Boy chose a Super 8 because it advertised free breakfast and free wi-fi.

The first sign we should have run was that the lobby smelled vaguely of dog urine and the night manager was, shall we say, not the smartest person we'd ever met. But we signed the little slip and got our bag out of the car.

The Not-So-Super 8 didn't have an elevator, so we had to drag the bag up to flights of stairs to our tiny hole. The tiny hole had two small double beds and a tiny TV and a thin layer of dirt and grime. We quickly removed the comforter and held out hope that at least the sheets had been washed.

I was on the fence about showering in the morning. There was a good chance I would come out dirtier than I had gone in. But I braved it because I needed it to wake up. I had to dry myself with an 8x10 piece of sandpaper. I would have used two of the four, but one had an ominous dark smudge on it.

We dressed and figured we would load the car, eat our "free continental breakfast" and be on our way. "Brekafast" for an allegedly full motel consisted of 6 half-sized muffins and some juice. There was a toaster available, but I'm not sure what we were supposed to toast.

As a final insult, as we were leaving the boy asked the day manager where the restroom was. The only restroom was in the grimy little in-room bathroom, so he had to retrieve the key and go back up.

At least we were really grateful to see our room in the (much more expensive) hotel here in Cincinnati.