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.

Fireflies at the “Resort and Marina”

Now, this could have been a beautiful setting. We even saw fireflies every night! But it looked like a survivalist camp. The “Resort and Marina” consists of seven “lodges” or “cabins” for rent. Then there’s a separate location for RVs. In a third area, there are some kind of permanent RVs that seem to be privately owned and don’t go anywhere. The owners of the property must have some sort of mutual easement with other homeowners there because the cabins are cheek by jowl with large private homes and contraptions built out of connected sheds and immobilized RVs and cinder-block buildings. Everyone has one or more golf carts. And it’s mostly gravel, and all day long good old boys and cracker-women and muddy kids ride back and forth hauling stuff all over. Although our dogs had to be leashed, theirs didn’t. Although we pick up after our dogs, most other people don’t.

All this is on the shore of Kentucky Lake, right on the Tennessee border, and you can see the Land Between the Lakes from it. Oh, and the marina itself. This is a collection of covered docks and open slips that all but obscures any decent view of the lake, so you kind of have to hunch down and bend over to see it.



From this marina they rent out pontoon boats and we really considered renting one, except guess what happened. Yup. On day three, it rained. Rained on and off for two days, and we decided we were just sick of being trapped in Big Crappie, and we quit. We were also thinking of trying to get my arm looked at, which we couldn’t seem to do in Kentucky, but would have to move on to Tennessee, or else backtrack a long way. But more about that failed odyssey later.

Finally, I want to describe the Big Crappie “Lodge” as it says on the oar, pictured in the entry below. It’s a shack, okay?



It has a screened porch, a TV, air conditioning and furniture, but it’s a shack. Everything in it is worn out. The bathroom floor had a rotten spot I was nervous about stepping on. I know they have internet access because that’s how we found them and got in touch, but it must be dial-up. I managed to get on (off someone else’s wifi, perhaps) and post one blog from there, but that was all. Given the isolation, the weather and the decrepitude of the place, we thought it best to move on. And as soon as the tornados in Tennessee stopped, that’s what we did.

Exploring Wisconsin Dells, or What the hell is wrong with these people?

In the Dells, we stayed at a very old resort which is in a nice setting on Lake Delton, which, even as we were there, was celebrating its return.



In case you were unaware, Lake Delton took an unexpected journey through its dam and into the Wisconsin River last year. Imagine that! But they managed to go get it and put it back where it belongs. Read this article for details.

http://www.weau.com/home/headlines/19667219.html

And so the whole town was just bursting with pride, and anticipation, and rain, and freezing cold! Our cabin had a little screened porch we couldn’t sit on, and a heater we used a lot, and a fireplace which may or may not have worked. I tried it, and it didn’t do anything, and I left it at that. We kind of needed the space in front of it to pile up dog cages and stuff.

The day after we arrived, we went to a local 50s-themed diner, and then to get groceries at a big box store I am too ashamed to name, and I got a haircut while Joyce shopped. Honestly, I’d rather have a root canal than go shopping. So I had the unusual experience of sitting around in a hair store listening to straight women discussing . . . well, mainly stuff I couldn’t care less about. But it was still better than shopping, and I bet I, and the guy who came in after me, were the easiest customers they had all day. Short hair made shorter, the end.

Now, guess what was going on back at the resort. A pre-party for the return of the lake. It seemed to be made up mainly of people the owners knew, and, like, relatives. No guests were staying there but us, and we were invited, but it was freezing. Anyway, it was just as if we did go, because they held this party basically right on top of us. Somebody brought a speedboat and everyone went out riding in it, and water skiing, in the rain and cold. We couldn’t even sit on the damned porch wearing sweatshirts and jeans, and those people are barbecuing and playing cornhole in the rain. And they made quite a to-do over all this, with beer, screaming children and barking dogs running loose. Once in a while they’d all disappear and then we’d run the dogs out for a quick walk. I don’t know if they went to church or a sex shop or what.

Then at night they’d shriek and whoop around the firepit, in the rain. The firepit was conveniently located about 40 feet from our front door, amid the playground equipment, which the kids used, also in the rain. It wasn’t like they were keeping us from using it, and as I said, we were invited, but come on! It looked mostly like an invitation to catch a bad cold. So we declined.