It was a late-May night in Alpine, Wyoming, sleet fell hard from the sky, my tent was soaked from the previous night, and my sleeping bag’s zipper did not work — cold air streamed in as if pushed by an Arctic wind. A motel night, for sure.
All my fishing partner, Mike, and I wanted was to slip into a cheap motel and gather a few hours of shuteye without taking a severe hit in the pocketbook. We stopped at one place, concluded that $60 was too much to pay for such a short time, then asked, “Is there a less-expensive place around here?” The night manager directed us down the street to a sleazy little motel.
Motel shenanigans.
We drove around the loop parking lot, sized it up and decided, what the heck. We entered the office and an older gentleman appeared from behind dark sliding doors. In the background, but fairly loud, I listened to one of the worst wheezing-hacks I’d ever heard. I raised my eyebrows and glanced at Mike. Then, I turned to the hotel manager and asked, “Do you have a dog?” He nodded, opened the door and directed a digit toward a 14-year old blue healer. Mike and I acknowledged the dog’s pain, then breathed sighs of relief. Then, we quickly paid the $40 charge and headed for our modest room.
After showering, Mike said, “For $40 it would be nice if the bathtub drained.” I peaked in and said, “That’s sick.” I added, “For $40 it would be nice if we got more than one fuzzy station on the television.” While bouncing on his back Mike added, “It would be nice if the foot of the bed wasn’t higher than the head of this springy bed.” “It would be nice if these walls weren’t covered with red felt,” I crowed.
The described motel experience is not odd; every motel that I stay in, whether during a hunting trip or one of my fishing ventures, leads to some strange, if not entertaining, experience. Take, for instance, a motel in Sandpoint, Idaho where my father and I stayed during the most miserably wet whitetail deer hunt I’ve ever been on. Each day, dad and I pushed through the wettest, thickest underbrush this side of Alaska and we got thoroughly soaked in the process. Gore-Tex, wool, polar-fleece — none of it kept us dry. I guarantee, when we returned to our room each day we weighed 15 pounds more than we did when we left. Fortunately, that motel offered a hot tub and one evening dad and I took full advantage of it. We lounged for an hour or more in that hot water wondering why nobody joined us. In fact, we wondered why the entire motel — a big one — seemed deserted. In the morning, while reading a local newspaper in the motel’s cafe, I found out why. A front-page headline told of a bomb-threat that cleared our motel the previous day while we chased deer around in the hills. Dad and I packed our bags, called our whitetail hunt a disaster and headed home.
Another time I stayed at a Best Western in Conrad, Montana while hunting pheasants with my dad and a couple friends. It wasn’t a bad place and the rooms were nice. The first night, I shared a room with my friend Torrey. We took full advantage of the attached casino and returned to our room rather late.
Before I realized what was going on Torrey had the telephone receiver to his ear and was talking to my father who shared the room next door with his pal, Byron. Before I could halt him, Torrey asked, “Hey, Fred, do you and Byron want a Schmidt (beer)?” The next day I apologized to dad, who reacted like any good parent should. “Oh, don’t worry about it,” dad replied. “We were just glad to know that you two made it home alive.”
That day, Torrey headed for Missoula. That evening, I shared a room with dad and Byron, which is something that I knew better than to do. I won’t make that mistake again; those guys beat me to sleep and they snored relentlessly. I couldn’t decipher between trains passing on nearby tracks and their breathing. After an hour trying to ignore their noses, I couldn’t take it any longer. I exited my bed, curled up in an isolated corner of the room, inserted earplugs and wrapped a pillow over my head. Didn’t work — their snores still crept into my skull. I imagined the drapes rising and falling in unison with their breathing. I contemplated a walk to the parking lot — the front of my truck on a 12-degree December night would certainly have been better than what I dealt with. In the end I managed two hours sleep and welcomed the sun.
In the morning I told Byron and dad, “You guys are the worst snorers I’ve ever been around. You sucked the drapes off the windows! You’re paying my share of the room.” Of course, like snore-happy people everywhere, they denied their delinquent septums and refused to pay my tab.
At the counter of that “no-dogs” motel, the clerk sneered and asked, “Did you guys have a dog in the hotel?” We looked at eachother accusingly, as if one of us, of all things, might have sneaked a dog into the room without the others noticing. We shook our heads, shrugged shoulders and set our bill son the counter. The lady said, “Then why was the ice bucket on the floor covered with dog hair?” Byron glanced at me as if to say, thanks for putting me through this. Then he confessed to the jury and paid an extra 10 bucks for my dog, the late Shadow.
Another time, during an antelope hunt and fall brown trout foray on the Yellowstone River, I shared a motel with my father, an Uncle and a friend, John. That motel, which we stayed in each year, offered a nice break after chasing pronghorn antelope around the prairie all day.
When we first stayed at that motel the proprietor was a modest man who wore typical garb — button-collar shirt and polyester pants or blue jeans. However, on this visit we noticed a wholesale change — he manned the office counter dressed in Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. Seems they filmed a big-time flick at his motel and he’d hobnobbed with the stars. We commented on the motel improvements and commended him for filling the formerly chuckhole riddled driveway with fresh gravel. He told us how he didn’t accept the movie crew’s initial monetary offer and really stuck it to them, to Hollywood. All of a sudden, life seemed very good, very important in Big Timber. Dad said he’d gone “Hollywood.”
Today, my dad harbors a vision, and recalls it often, of that man walking outside his motel on a 20-degree night, dressed in shorts and a flowered shirt, a plunger clutched in his right hand. Living the high life. While some motel experiences are trying, I also remember many good times spent with family and friends. Good or bad, there is one thing that can be said about motels — they may not be the most comfortable places to spend a night, but each has its own character and provides some sort of relief from the elements. As my dad always promised, that relief gets more appealing as we grow older. These days, the back of the truck and a soggy tent aren’t as inviting as they used to be and the characters you meet at those off the beaten path establishments are worth the price of admission.