Archive for July, 2009

Un-Green Hotels

Jul 30

We have stayed in 26 different hotels on our journey so far. We are fairly adamant about recycling and we always ask at each hotel if they have recycling so that we can dispose of our paper and bottles responsibly. Not a single hotel has had bins for recycling. All but one hotel has looked at us like we were weird and like our request was silly. That one good hotel, a Day’s Inn in Wausau, Wisconsin, at least understood our request and said that if we left out recycling items on the counter they would recycle them.

So why are hotels so against recycling? Laziness? Since most cities have recycling, there is seldom, if ever, an excuse for hotels to not recycle.

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More Desert Adventures

Jul 30

Posted by Paula in Culture, Food, Nature, Self, Travel, Work

Flagstaff is a really cute little town. The Grand Canyon is not cute. The road there also is not. Everything is impossibly huge. Seems a lot of European tourists visit the Grand Canyon—heard French, Italian, and German frequently—and I really wonder how Wild West the experience is or is not for them. We went along the South Rim and got to see rain from afar and up close and the shifting of the light over the course of the afternoon—it sometimes appears almost a solid thing, and I’m sure there’s a bad quantum physics pun in there somewhere, but I prefer watching it to quantifying it. I felt a great sense of peace at Navajo Point, as if I could lay my whole self out over the entire canyon and feel the immensity of it. I wished I could stay there for a long time.

Instead, we drove late into the night to Las Vegas. We drove through the Hoover Dam, since they are repairing the bridge that would normally go over it. It was like driving through a Dr. Who set in the dark (current Dr., not the old ones). It was a bit creepy, actually, despite being intriguing, probably because we couldn’t entirely see what was going on in the dark. By the time we got to Vegas, it was quite late, and we were quite tired, but we drove the Strip and attempted photography anyway. We stayed at a casino hotel a bit on the edge of the whole shebang; we got a room for $18, but they added an $11 “resort fee” when we got there. We did not appreciate the misinformation, but still—not an expensive room. And it was a big suite with lots of space, which we thoroughly took advantage of for yoga in the morning.

Today we went to one of those giant lunch buffets and felt a bit shamefacedly like delighted greedy little piggies. I don’t think I’ve had sushi and enchiladas at the same sitting before. We perhaps overstayed our welcome slightly, since we picked a quiet corner for me to do some editing, but we had so much fun laughing at everything, and we didn’t think we were keeping anyone from a table or our waitress from her tips, so we indulged our guilty pleasure. Afterwards, we wandered around and looked at the slot machines for awhile before picking one to put a dollar in. They are so complicated looking. How weird! We did not win.

Things got interesting after we left. We were heading west again, out across the Mojave Desert, but did not get too far before being rear-ended on the expressway in Vegas. I was driving, but it was not my fault. Really. Nevadans drive like maniacs. I suspect someone was trying to merge onto the expressway, but things did not go well, and everybody in front of me slammed on their brakes. I did, too. The young woman behind me, unfortunately, did not. She mentioned something about “looking up”—I suspect a cell phone may have been involved. Nevertheless, the Rabbit has a bit of a dent and the trunk is a little sticky to open, but everybody and everything else is fine (shaken, not stirred?).

After the requisite calls and forms and conversation with the police, we did indeed cross the Mojave and go through Barstow and all and are in a slightly stuffy little room in San Bernardino. Can’t say I’m too happy with the drivers on the freeways in California, but I suppose that’s to be expected.

The highest temperature the Rabbit registered was 109 in Las Vegas.

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Through the Desert

Jul 28

Posted by Paula in Nature

We gave up Ojo Caliente for the Grand Canyon (which we have not yet seen) and had a great day in the meantime. We had thought it’d be nice to hang out at Ojo, which is an interesting assortment of hot springs, but given our difficulties with the altitude shift, we figured it might not be the smartest thing to go soak in really hot water at an even higher altitude, despite the obvious charm of slathering on mud and baking in the sun and lolling about in the springs. So we decided to move forward, push westward, and started off with a relatively quick visit to the petroglyphs at the edge of Albuquerque. When we got to the visitors’ center, we saw a snake in the parking lot and then a warning on the door and had a nice conversation with the ranger on duty about what to do in case of rattlesnakes (the one in the lot was not). So we decided to drive over to the wimpier of the available walks and have a look and avoid walking a long way in the afternoon sun. A whole lotta sweat and photos later, we began our trek to Flagstaff, AZ. Wow wow oh wow zing—what an amazingly beautiful drive. Neither of us had been through this territory before. The giant red buttes and mesas (we need to look into the difference between the two) looked like huge sphinx paws, the yellow ones looked like bones, and the grey ones looked like giant walruses. As we made our way west oohing and ahhing over everything, we found ourselves at the entrance to the painted desert and petrified forest, so we drove the 28 miles through (lots more pictures, to be posted soonish) what looked like the surface of the moon or some alien planet, with mounds and pyramids and teepees of sand neatly layered in reds and purples and greys and 200 million-year-old crystalized logs littering the landscape. Everything smelled good. Everything felt good. We were very happy. As the sun was starting to set, admiring the 360 degree horizon’s plays of light and cloud and rain and lightening in the distance, we drove the rest of the way to Flagstaff to a lovely hotel room across the street from the largest Ponderosa pine tree forest in the world, which is not visible in the dark but still smells wonderful.

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Hotels are Not Made for Evening People

Jul 27

Posted by Douglas in Travel

America is made for morning people. This society expects its people to be up and out the door early and doing things. The work day begins at 8 am or earlier for many people. That means most people have to start their commute around 7 am and have to be awake by 6 am. The motel industry builds its schedule around this norm. Breakfast, if served at all, is usually served 6 to 9am, only rarely as late as 10 am. Checkout is at 11 am.

I am not a morning person. Paula is not a morning person. Left to our own devices we would sleep from 1 am to 10 am. This creates conflicts with the hotel world when we are traveling. The hotels can’t seem to imagine why anyone wouldn’t be long gone by 11 am; we would rather be just getting going at that time. We seldom make it to the free breakfasts that end at 9am. We often just barely get out by 11 am each morning. We get up between 8 and 9 am, clean up, do yoga, check e-mail, pack up the luggage, hand in the room keys (usually right at 11 am), stow the luggage in the car, and go. In normal life our prime working hours are 2 to 10 pm because this fits our biological clocks. We naturally fall into that while traveling too. At most hotels we are the last reservation to check in—the clerks often remark about that. My mom is always in bed by 10 pm and awake by 6am (7 am on weekends). Her schedule fits the hotel world.

Traveling is difficult for nocturnal people. How do people who work the night shift and sleep during the day handle it? Do the hotels, who seem rather adamant about their check in no earlier than 3 pm and check out no later than 11 am, make any allowances for people who want to sleep during the day? Probably not.

I have never understood hotels’ absolute intransigence on the morning check out time. Whenever I have asked or even suggested to a hotel clerk about checking out after 11 am I have been met with significant suspicion if not open hostility. “You can pay for another day” is the only reply. The cleaning staffs don’t get to most rooms until well after noon; and of course how many times does someone trying to check in at 3 pm hear that their room is not ready yet?

It seems to me that if you rent a room you should have an option to have it for up to 24 hours, not 12 to 18. If I check in at 11 pm I have to vacate at 11 pm the following night, not 11 am. If hotels think that would cost them too many customers wanting to check in to that room before 11 pm, then make check out time 5 or 6 pm. Very few people want to check in before that time. Since most hotel customers are business travelers they aren’t checking in before 5 pm. If hotels want to leave a buffer zone for cleaning staff, then have 3 pm as a deadline for both check in and check out. The hotels would lose nothing. I know we would give our business to a hotel that would have that policy.

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Bad Altitude

Jul 26

Posted by Douglas in Travel

Hiking around in 95-degree heat at 7,000 feet elevation is harsh – doesn’t make you feel good afterward. We both are in New Mexico which is indeed the Land of Enchantment. The vistas are grand and the colors of the rocks and bushes are beautiful. It is very hot and dry though and we are both suffering from the altitude. We have a bag of popcorn that we purchased in Chicago (600 feet elevation) last weekend. The bag has ballooned to the point of nearly bursting now that the outside air pressure here in Albuquerque is at 5,600 feet. At least we know that that bag is truly vacuum sealed. Stands to reason though that all of our internal organs have gone through similar bloatings. Good thing those internal organs are not vacuum sealed.