Hotel Stays From Hell; Bad Or Unusual Experiences That Now Seem Humorous

Abandoned motel on Route 66 in Tucumcari, New Mexico.  Just for legal purposes, I am not
saying that this motel, when operating, was bad in any way.  I have no knowledge of what quality
of motel it was.  The image here is just for illustration purposes.  I'm not a lawyer and I didn't stay
in a Holiday Inn Express last night.  Just sayin'. lol (click to enlarge)

Recently, a reader of this blog raised the idea that I should do a post about all of my 'unusual' experiences I've had staying in some of the 400+ (best estimate) hotels and motels at which I've stayed over my lifetime.  I thought that a fun idea.  Also, I thought it could be humorous (now) as well.  Some, not so humorous then.

I used to travel extensively during my personal and work life.  Additionally, when I had to travel for work to some far away location, I would always either go a few days early or stay a few days after the work was complete.  I thought it an effective way of using some of my vacation leave to explore the area and photograph.

Here are brief synopses of some of the experiences I had in so-called "Hotels from Hell."

I traveled to Ann Arbor, Michigan for the wedding of one of my best friends.  I arrived a few days early just to hang out with him before the wedding.  I was staying in a Hampton Inn. After messing around to mid afternoon my friend and I went back to my hotel so I could change clothes. I noticed the housekeeper’s cart in the hallway next to my door but my door was closed. I used my key to open the door, walked around the corner and there I found the housekeeper and a maintenance man in my bed. Let me just say they were enjoying themselves. I told them loudly to get up and get out.  Neither spoke English.  I made them get out of my bed without getting dressed marched them out of my room. I was furious. I then beelined to the front desk and notified the manager. Unfortunately, for their bad judgment, their employment was terminated immediately. Thinking back, the manager never offered to comp my room or even give me a discount for my trouble. I demanded and did get a complete change of sheets, blankets and pillows, however. One doesn't experience that very often, thankfully!

I attended a conference in Greensboro, North Carolina. I had to be there a couple of days early for meetings because I was a member of the executive board. After one long day of meetings, I returned to my room about 11 p.m. to go to bed. As I was moving the pillows around and pulling down the blanket, a pair of white women’s panties fell to the floor from between the pillows. I stopped dead in my tracks. I asked myself what is this all about? Am I being set up? How in the world did women’s panties get between my pillows? I called the front desk and told them what occurred and then I told them I wanted new pillows, new blankets, new sheets, new duvet, everything off my bed and changed with all new, clean bed clothes. Shortly thereafter, two security officers came to my room wearing when I can only describe as Tyvek suits. They had long tongs and a large black plastic bag to pick up the panties and carry them off. Unbelievable. The next morning, I marched down to the manager’s office and relayed my experience to him. He thought that potentially the panties were still in the bed when the housekeeper changed bedclothes and with static electricity stuck to one of the pillowcases when the bed was remade. How could a maid not see a pair of women’s panties stuck to the outside of a pillowcase? That was my question him. I explained to him that if I didn't notice those panties and they somehow got mixed up with my dirty clothes and my wife found them while doing laundry, there is no explanation in the world that I could offer that she would believe.  Can you say divorce?  He offered to comp my room but I told him it was a business conference and the government was paying my expenses.  He then offered to place an equivalent number of points on my hotel rewards card, but never did. 

This is another experience at that same hotel at the same conference, different year.  The conference was being held over the memorial day weekend. Holiday weekends are often accompanied by youth sports tournaments. This hotel had hosted many of the soccer teams of boys from 9 to 15 that were participating in a regional tournament. That is okay except for the fact that because of the volume of young boys, their parents had them put the hotel rooms' ironing boards in the hallways and then placed numerous pizzas on the ironing boards on each floor. The kids could choose which kinds of pizza they wanted to eat.  Again, this wouldn’t be a big deal except that they put the soccer kids on the same floors with the business travelers. I know one evening, I got back to my room, very late, and I counted about 45 hotel room door slams in five minutes. The kids constantly ran in and out of the different rooms letting the door slam each time. Of course, the place reeked with the smell of pizza which doesn't help when you are trying to go to sleep.  That caused another meeting I had with the hotel's manager about that.  I asked him how they could be so short sighted to put dozens of young kids on the same floors as the business travelers?  His answer was that the chain has a reservation department that makes the reservations and they are not made locally. Not a good excuse.  Unacceptable, for a business to operate that way.

There was a Holiday Inn in downtown Richmond, Virginia. I was staying on the 10th floor. After my work was over for the day, I returned to my hotel room only to find a mouse on the loose in my room. It took me until the next day, but I finally caught the mouse by putting some potato chips on the bathroom floor. With the mouse and me in the bathroom and the door closed, I cornered him and got him into one of the old glass drinking glasses (everything seems to be plastic now). I then put the protective plastic wrap over the glass, took the elevator downstairs and knocked on the manager’s door. I put the glass with the mouse in it down on the manager’s desk. He looked at the glass, then me and his jaw dropped!  What I found humorous was what the manager said to me. He looked at me and said, “Did anybody see you bring this down here?”  I told him no. Then I asked him how a mouse could get into my room on the 10th floor? Later, after a bit of investigation, he told me that a new Coke machine was delivered to the 10th floor the day before. We surmised the mouse rode up in the Coke machine and must have entered my room while the housekeeper had the door propped open. In the end, I took the mouse across the street and turned him loose on another piece of property. All in all, I thought it was kind of funny.  Thank goodness mice like greasy potato chips!

While on my last Route 66 cross country road trip, my friends and I stayed in the famous and historical El Rancho hotel in Gallup, NM.  Inside the lobby area as well as in the second floor open area above the lobby, there are many, many signed photographs of Hollywood stars who stayed there when they were making western-themed movies in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. In fact, they have rooms named after famous Hollywood stars. However, because the hotel is quite old (1936) and the rooms were so small there was some a maneuvering that had to be done in order to be comfortable. For example, the bathrooms were so tiny that if you sat on the toilet, you could wash your hands in the sink at the same time! The sink was literally a foot away from the front of the toilet. I found I had to actually grab onto the sink to raise up off the toilet as my knees would hit the two chrome legs that held up the wash basin.  I’ve never had that experience before!  So much for old, historic and famous hotels. That said, I really can’t complain about the El Rancho. It is a very cool hotel, and I would stay there again.  You just have to learn to adapt.

If you have ever traveled to Yellowstone National Park and stayed in one of the rustic cabins, then you know that there is no cell phone reception, no television, no AM/FM radio reception, no landline telephone and no way to communicate with the outside world. Unless you go to one of the large lodges, you have no way of getting information in or information out. It was a strange feeling.  I asked one of the young men who worked at the nearby lodge how he and his fellow workers communicated with the outside world. He said they were able to get very limited Internet service (paying quite a bit monthly and not available to the public) or if they drove 10 miles from the lodge and stopped in one specific place along the roadway, they could get very weak cell phone coverage and make calls. Wow! I bet for young people that is a difficult pill to swallow.  One qualifier. The last time I was in Yellowstone was 2012 so things may have changed by then.  Hopefully.

In 1999, my wife and I decided to take our two high school aged children for a two-week vacation to California. Our son would graduate next June and after that, he’d be away at a university and we didn’t know if we would be able to have another family vacation with all four of us together. So we flew to California. I had researched and developed an extensive itinerary of everywhere we would visit, with one place being Lake Tahoe. Because there were four of us and the vacation was two weeks long every once in a while I would book 2 rooms instead of one so the adults could separate from the children.  It’s called much needed ‘quiet time.’  We arrived at the hotel in Lake Tahoe about 7 PM the day of our stay. Immediately, I had a bad feeling. As I drove past the swimming pool to park our rental vehicle I noticed the water was a dark green/brown color. That was the first ominous sign. I parked and walked to the office.  As I entered the office I could hear people arguing coming  through the open door that appeared to be small living quarters.  Evidently the managers lived in the space behind the front desk. As I walked in the two of them were engaged in a fierce domestic quarrel. That was the second ominous sign. At that point, I really wanted to cancel our stay but since I made the reservations on my credit card and it was past 6 PM of the day of our arrival, I could not cancel the two rooms without losing all of my money. So, we took a chance and went to our the rooms. We found the rooms dirty with food crumbs on the carpet and under the bed, stains on the carpeting, cobwebs where the ceiling meets the walls and everything was worn and old looking.  Everything was old and needing replaced—long before, in fact.  My wife and daughter were so upset that they refused to change into their pajamas to go to bed. So my son and I stayed in one room with the mindset that we were camping out in a wild. My wife and daughter stayed in the other room, fully clothed all night, huddled together on the bed doing their bed to not touch anything!  It was a long night.  We got out of there very early the next morning.  Later, after we returned home, I wrote complaining, but professional letters to both hotel chain’s corporate headquarters as well as the owner of the local franchise of the hotel. I never got a response from either. Not even an acknowledgment that they received my physical letters (not email).  I’ve never stayed in that chain anywhere in the United States again. Lesson learned.

A good friend and fellow railfan and I decided to travel to Roanoke, Virginia as the National Railroad Historical Society was holding its national conference in that city. Norfolk Southern Railroad would have both of their steam locomotives, the #611 and the #1218 pulling trains.  As a bonus, they would run b locomotives, the #611 pulling a passenger train and the #1218 pulling a freight train, side by side west out of Roanoke. There’s no way we would pass up this unique opportunity.  It was a last-minute decision and we could not find any hotel reservations. We thought we would take a chance and that we would find something. Well, after arriving and spending the day photographing steam locomotives, we could not find anywhere to stay within the immediate Roanoke area. So we decided to drive south of the city and see if there was a motel located within the next 10 or 15 miles. We happened upon the Apple Valley Motel.  The Apple Valley was a very small property. I think it had maybe only 15 or so rooms. Anyway, my friend and I went into the lobby to the front desk and rang the little bell on the counter. A rather large man (in stature) with a crew cut, came out from back and asked us if he could help us. He stood straight up and had a very rigid posture.  We thought that unusual.  Stiff, I would say.  We told him we wanted two rooms for the night. He looked at us, puzzled and said, “There are two of you and you want two rooms. “  We responded yes, that was correct. He then, again, looked at us and said, “Let me get this right. There are two of you, and you want two rooms."  Again, we said yes. He then brought out two small cards, laid them on the counter and pushed them toward us. He gave us two pencils.  The kind that you get at a miniature golf course.  The very short yellow ones.  He then told us that we needed to fill out the cards as registration. Wow! No electronics or computers at all! We filled out the cards and he gave us our room keys.  We walked down the sidewalk to the exterior doors of our rooms and went in. First, I noticed there was about a 1 inch gap under my door. Second, I noticed that the pillowcases, the sheets, the blankets, and the towels all were labeled Roanoke Community Hospital.  Between the two of us we had to wonder, considering the look, posture, stiffness and dialog we had with the front desk guy as well as the linens markings, if this was some sort of outpatient quasi-release program to integrate people back into the real world. It was a strange place.  I’m sure he was okay but it was a really unusual experience.

I once was on a trip to the Buffalo, New York area and decided to visit Niagara Falls.  I stayed in a multi-story hotel.  Very nice.  The kind that any of you would be comfortable staying.  My sense is that it was an Holiday Inn.  About 2:30 a.m., I was awakened by some godawful loud noise.  Very loud!  It took me a few seconds but I realized it was the fire alarm!  I remember getting out of bed and walking over to the large picture window and looking down at the parking lot.  I saw three or four fire trucks and firefighters scurrying about.  Hmmm.  I thought to myself I should probably get dressed, grab my wallet and get out.  So, I did.  But, (and I was in my early 20s) I didn't go down the stairs.  I did exactly what you are never supposed to do.  I pressed the button, got in the elevator and rode down to the first floor.  Luckily, it wasn't a very bad fire that I remember but they made us stand out in the parking lot for a couple of hours.  In fact, I don't remember what actually was on fire.  It might have been the laundry room.  But the occasion got my attention that I've remembered the incident for about 50 years!  Thinking about it today, I have no excuse for taking the elevator.  Don't do it!

Just a short humorous story.  In the past, the hotel at which we always stay on Virginia's Eastern Shore when we take our annual bird and wildlife photography trip, there was one peculiarity that was annoying at best, aggravating at worst.  Over the years staying there, none of the toilet seats or lids would stay up!  In all the rooms in which I stayed, as well as my friends stayed, it was the same.  You had to either hold the toilet seat and lid up when urinating or somehow prop it up.  Whatever plumber engineered the drain under the toilet put it just a tiny bit too close to the wall which forced the toilet too close to the wall.  That in turn forced the lid on the toilet water reservoir to push forward, which again in turn, was just far enough forward that the toilet seats would not stay up on their own.  It got to the point that I thought it was funny and whenever I made a reservation I always asked for a room in which the toilet seat would stay up!  Luckily, they renovated several years ago and that problem was solved.  But it was aggravating, especially at 3 o'clock in the morning!

This one is kind of sad.  We were staying in an Airbnb on Mackinac Island in Michigan.  It was a very old, stately home, beautifully decorated with a great host.  However, the walls were so thin between the rooms that on the second night a couple checked into a room next to my wife's and mine.  After dinner, evidently things were not going well for the couple as they were engaged in a domestic fight.  At least the husband was.  I never did hear the wife's voice.  He was shouting loudly enough that we could clearly hear everything he said through the wall.  He was shouting and demeaning her in terrible ways and, frankly, I was infuriated with how he was treating her.  To top it off, he was quoting the Bible as he was doing it.  I was closely listening for any physical violence and if I had detected any I would have immediately intervened.  Thankfully, they were only there for one night.  I don't know who they were.  They were not at breakfast the next morning, but no one deserves to be treated as he treated her.

On the same trip to Michigan, we stayed in an old hotel in Petoskey.  It was a really beautiful, historical but old property with double hung windows which needed to be opened for ventilation.  I don't think there was air conditioning, but I may be wrong.  After we returned from dinner, sometime after 7 p.m., I walked down the stately double-wide wooden staircase to ask a question of the front desk clerk.  To my surprise, no clerk,  Only a note propped up on the countertop indicating the clerk on-duty is at home and to call the number shown if anything is needed.  That was a first for me!  

At a business conference held at the posh Homestead Resort in Warm Springs, Virginia, because the property I'll assume was completely full, my wife and I were assigned to a handicapped accessible room.  Nothing wrong with that.  In fact, there are some benefits.  However, directly outside our door were double doors behind which the housekeeping staff's tools of the trade were kept.  Well, at about 6 a.m. the housekeeping staff arrived in great numbers and started talking, getting their carts, etc., out and ready for a days' work.  Needless to say, there was no sleeping after 6 a.m.  After the first morning, I talked to the staff and because the resort property was completely full, there was nowhere they could move us.  Oh well.  That was a little inconvenient but it was a company paid trip to a top notch resort hotel, spa, golf courses, hiking trails and some of the best food you can find anywhere, etc., I didn't complain too much.  I was grateful for just being able to be there.  ADDENDUM:  A few years later, my wife and I decided to go back and spend a wedding  anniversary at the Homestead.  I happened to mention to the young lady who took my reservation about the previous trip.  To my surprise, when we arrived, they had given us a free upgrade to a huge two room suite with two balconies, fireplace, etc.  Again, I'm grateful.  I can highly recommend the Homestead as you find it a wonderful experience with lots to do.

In downtown Baltimore I had a hotel directly across the street from a fire station.  Need I say more?  No sleep. Did I mention sirens all night long?  Grrrr.

I mentioned this in a post a couple of weeks ago.  In Fredericksburg, Virginia on a very cold January day, a group of us traveled there to meet a friend who lived there and we all planned to photograph trains.  We returned to my hotel rooms after dinner.  It was dark out.  Overnight it started snowing with a good amount of wind and by morning when I awoke, I was the beneficiary of a good amount of snow incursion into the room from under the door.  It had to be at least a half inch and the wind drove it in about a foot or so.  What I had not noticed the night before was the large gap under the door.  I knew if felt colder on that side of the room, but I had no idea.  Luckily that was the only night staying there.  No need to complain as it was an very inexpensive hotel and there was no way they were going to make changes to anything.

My wife and I traveled to New York City for a three day excursion.  I reserved a room at a hotel not far off Times Square.  This was my first time actually staying in NYC.  Other times, I visited during the day an left.  After we checked into our hotel, we took the elevator to the third or fourth floor.  When I opened the door, much to my surprise the room was about as big as a master bedroom closet.  That is understandable considering the cost of real estate.  Squeeze as many people into a property as you can to make ends meet.  But, there was a window!  Thank goodness for small things.  I pulled back the curtains on the window to let some light into the rather dark room and, again surprise!  A brick wall about three feet away from the window.  Oh well!  It's the Big Apple!

That's enough stories for now.  I have others but it you have stayed with me this long, thank you.  I hope you laughed a bit.  I laugh now, but through most of this, I wasn't laughing.  And so it goes.

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Thanks for looking. Enjoy!  

Dennis A. Mook  

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