Reflections: strangers on a stranger journey.

There sure is a lot to reflect on here, maybe enough for two entries. I’ll just try to go in some sort of logical progression about things we learned, and things we would do differently, and where we might go next.

The most obvious things are stuff like route, time and accommodations. Although our route was boring on occasion, we (well, mostly I) selected it, and parts of it, for particular reasons. There were people or places we wanted to see, so we went there. What I learned about the upper and central Midwest is, except for certain individual locations, which may be very spread out, there’s not a lot to see or do of the kinds of things we like. We did the Ingalls-Wilder stops because we were up that way anyhow. I doubt I would make that sort of trip again because now we have seen it and now we know. We’re really glad we saw the thirteen states we went through, because we just hadn’t seen some of them at all, and now we have, and we wanted to know what was out there. Joyce has five states left to see, which will largely determine where we go next.

We certainly did the right thing by avoiding cities. We only went into Memphis and Chattanooga, and Memphis wasn’t worth it. We are not interested in “nightlife” or “entertainment” or drinking ourselves into oblivion. We hate traffic, noise, dirt and crowds. These things don’t excite us a bit. Except for airports and necessary evils like finding the VA, I doubt we’ll ever deliberately tour a city again, at least, not in North America. Europe is an entirely different story, but it is so easy to travel there, we will probably delay returning there until our late 70s, because anyone can do Europe. We’ll save what’s left of our youth and strength for the more adventurous kinds of travel we prefer at the moment.

As to the time spent, seven weeks is too much, at least of that type of travel. We’ve decided to limit ourselves to six next time, and see how that goes. A lot of the strain of travel had to do with accommodations, and now we have learned a lot more about those. You know, we’ve been traveling for decades, but that doesn’t mean we know it all, because many things have changed in recent years that make road tripping harder than it used to be, and one of them is mean people. So we now know some things to do to avoid them.

Regarding accommodations, we would pay more for a better quality of service. We would scrupulously avoid certain chains, and deliberately seek out others. We wanted to use La Quinta as exclusively as possible, but they aren’t in all the places we wanted to be. So we learned which chains to avoid, and which are a suitable substitute. The best for traveling with animals is La Quinta. Americinn is the most quiet and probably the most attractive. Holiday Inn Express is the most luxurious. And Belmont is second in all categories. We’re sending them all letters of appreciation with a few suggestions on how to become ideal.

That’s enough for one entry. Watch for another one soon.

A note on cabin rentals

We have found two categories of places that take pets, and, as the old joke goes, one is swell and the other is lousy.

We have been spoiled by places like Collins Rentals on St George Island, where the rental homes are immaculate.

http://www.sgirentals.com/index.cfm

Likewise Bend of the River Cabins in Georgia. Pets are allowed in a good number of units and they sparkle.

http://www.bendoftheriver.net/

As far as chains go, we are sold on La Quinta. 99% of their properties allow pets. (I counted!) and they are sparkling clean and good quality. Holiday Inn Express, Belmont and Americinn are all good quality when they allow pets, but not all of them do. Depending on the location, they may also have absurd restrictions like, the dogs can’t be left in the room, so you can’t go out.

Then there is the flip side of the coin. They allow pets, and they’re dives: Super/“Stupor” 8, “Quality” Inn, “Comfort” Inn, Days/“Daze” Inn, Ramada Limited. These are all very poorly maintained and managed. In addition to being noisy, they are often dirty. They have bugs, wet paint, slimy pools and dirty breakfast areas. The staff is poorly-trained and/or indifferent. And it’s all a crapshoot. I know there are hotel review sites, but I checked the one for one Super 8 and everyone loved it. It was a hellhole. And you can look at pictures, but they won’t show dirt or bad attitudes.

Even when you arrive in a dive, and you know it, you are usually too tired to start hunting for someplace else, and if it’s only a night, you tolerate it and complain in person and on-line, but that’s not fun. This is why I want to contact the good chains I mentioned above with my list of requirements for the ideal, pet-loving motel. They all have a lot of the things we want already. Just a couple of tweaks and they could gather ALL the pet family business and wipe the others out.

Finally, the issue of rental cabins. Many of these are mom and pop enterprises and it’s an extremely tiring business. Think of your own house and multiply by ten or so. All these people are in your face for their needs, and they mess it up, and they break things. The weather doesn’t always cooperate. Your hired staff, if any, are not necessarily rocket scientists or ethics professors. If you can’t personally clean every unit, there will be problems. You don’t always make enough money to fix or replace everything, and you have to make choices. So you add on new decks and let the raggedy towels go till next year, when, of course, the water heaters explode.

Bottom line: just clean them, and a cracked plate or torn window shade won’t bother me. But then the whole thing is run down and dirty, I won’t be back, and I’ll tell my friends.