Always Lock your Hotel Room

Yesterday’s plan worked.  We were up and ready to go by 8:30.  Before leaving we paid a quick visit to the owner of the caboose property.  Chris was interested in knowing how much it cost to buy and set up a caboose.  We definitely don’t have the property at home for a caboose but maybe someday we will.  Then we heard the price so maybe we won’t.  The expensive part seems to be not so much purchasing the caboose, but having it transported to your property and set up.  He said the shipping along can run $10-$12K.  Chris had read someplace once that the total cost can be somewhere in the $20-$30K range, but that was a few years ago.  The caboose hotel was a few miles off of the parkway so for a change of scenery we took a different route back to the parkway than we drove in on.  As we were driving we got a good picture of one of those lonely back roads in the morning light.

We had planned on stopping at the Marby Mill for breakfast.  The mill was only a few miles up the parkway and we were there before 9.  We were lucky to get there when we did because the restaurant was tiny, maybe only a dozen or so tables.  Once we were served our food a bus load of senior citizens pulled up and they were all hungry too.  Had we arrived only 10 minutes later we would have had to wait.  We both ordered a pancake sampler because first, we were in the mood for pancakes, second, we had kept reading about their buckwheat pancakes, and third, they also had sweet potato pancakes, which we had not been expecting.  The sampler had those two plus a cornmeal pancake.  We each got freshly baked biscuits as well.  After eating, we took a walk around the area of the mill.  They had several displays set up describing rural life in Appalachia.  There was a grist mill complete with flume for diverting water from a steam, a blacksmith shop, several cabins, a bunch of tools that were used 100 years ago, plus a moonshine still.  Marby Mill is no longer functioning like the last grist mill we stopped by, but apparently, it is one of the most photographed places in Virginia, so we took a picture as well.

After leaving the mill, we headed back 2 miles on the parkway to visit a store that we had read about in one of the guidebooks we picked up called Poor Farmers Farm.  The store was about 5 miles off of the parkway and it sold country type gifts along with samples of fudge and local produce.  Just before we got to where the directions told us the store should be located, we hit some of the worst fog we had ever seen before.  As a result, we ended up driving right past the store, even though we were looking for it.  We drove for a couple of more miles until we saw some signs for “Lovers Leap”.  This was a huge cliff with a pull off right on top.  By this time the fog had cleared enough to see a few about a hundred yards on front of us, which was too bad because the view was probably really good from there.  We did see an interesting sign warning motorists and people picnicking about bears in the area.  We then backtracked; hit the bad fog again but this time found the store.  We only bought a mailbox cover and we browsed for a little bit.

We got back to the parkway and headed north.  When we passed the mill again, which was now about an hour and a half later than we originally stopped for breakfast, the bus was still there.  We were still glad we got there ahead of the bus.

After passing the mill we only had to drive another 5 miles before we turned off again, this time for a winery.  We stopped at the Chateau Morrisette winery, which was a mile or two off of the parkway.  It just so happened they had free tastings, which we decided to partake in.  We were surprised to see that we were the only customers at this very large winery, but it was only lunchtime and it was also mid-week.  This time we only sampled three wines each, as the more extensive tasting was $8.  We bought a bottle or two at this winery as well.  Once we left, a few other cars pulled in.

We got back on the parkway and stopped at several viewpoints, but the views were not nearly as spectacular as they had been a few days before.  It could have been the gloomy weather or it could have been the scenery, but either way we were making much better time.  The one interesting thing we did see at one stop was a field full of cows and two of the cows kept butting heads with each other.  The picture we took doesn’t really show them fighting, but it was still kind of cool.  The amount of traffic on Monday was also far less than it had been on Saturday and Sunday.  At one point about 2 hours into our drive we estimated that we may have passed less than 100 cars total in the 2 hours we had driven.  We did notice that at several of the overlooks we kept seeing the same car with New Hampshire license plates.  They were either just leaving as we arrived at some of the overlooks or we were leaving as they arrived.  At one particular overlook we decided to talk to them.  As it turns out they are from Walpole, NH which is on the Vermont border about a half hour north of the NH border.  They were a much older couple who were returning from Florida.  The woman was much friendlier than the man and she was impressed that not only had we known where Walpole, NH was, but we had been there and Chris could remember the name of the restaurant we had eaten at (it was a roadfood restaurant).  She gave us some tips for the next time we were in the area, which we will probably use since it is only a 2 hour or so drive from home.  Jackie was telling the woman about our trip, telling her that we had wanted to drive the BRP many times but we always ran out of time.  The lady gave Jackie some life advice: always make the time to do the things you want or you will get old and regret it.  Good advice we thought.  We let them be on their way because they had planned on being home by Tuesday night and they still had a good 700 miles ahead of them and it was already well into the afternoon on Monday.

By this time we were getting hungry.  We knew there was a relatively large town coming up; actually by most standards it would be a small city, Roanoke, VA.  The parkway actually went through the city limits so that was where we would be stopping.  Our roadfood book was warning us of a good restaurant in Roanoke which we had been looking forward to called The Roanoker.  The Roanoker was famous for what was described as wafer-sliced him: a plateful of prosciutto-thin pieces of ham dripping red-eye gravy with biscuits on the side.  We were looking forward to this.  As it turned out, the restaurant was only 5 minutes off of the parkway so we headed that way.  We got there quickly and much to our disappointment, the restaurant is closed one day each week: Monday.  So we quickly reassessed the situation.  Chris pulled out his tripadvisor app on the phone and we found a really good burger place right up the road called Burger in the Square.  They were no longer in the square, as they had relocated from downtown Roanoke to a strip mall, but they were still really good.  We had burgers with sweat tea.

After lunch we headed back to the parkway.  We next headed up Mt. Roanoke, which was a four-mile one way trip up to the top of a mountain which overlooked the city.  Since the weather was pretty overcast we didn’t get much of a view, but while we were looking for a geocache up in the woods on the top of the mountain, we did see a large bird only a few yards away from us.  We didn’t know what it was at the time but it was either nesting or hunting.  When we approached it took off.  When we got back to the car there were a couple of guys who were bird watching.  We asked them what it was we saw and after describing it to them they said it was a turkey vulture and there was likely something dead in the woods that it was eating.  We had seen countless turkey vultures before, but always flying, never on the ground close up.

We drove another 60 or so miles on the parkway on Monday.  We did not stop much since the views were mostly clouded in.  We got one last picture before getting off of the parkway.  Apparently there had been a forest fire sometime in the last couple of years.  Much of the woods were burned as we drove by and we noticed that the parkway seems to have acted as a firewall.  Much of the forest was charred on one side, while the other side hadn't been touched.

We finally got off the parkway at around milepost 60 and we stayed in Lynchburg, VA for the night.  We had driven through Lynchburg before on a previous trip but never stayed there.  We stayed again at a Holiday Inn Express because we have an un-Godly amount of points to burn and we can always get a good room with few points.  In fact when we use points, not all hotels are created equal.  Hotel Indigos for example, where we stayed in Asheville, charge a crazy amount of points per night, something like 35,000.  Holiday Inn Expresses can range from 10,000 to 20,000 points with the 20,000 point rooms being in busier properties and the 10K properties being in smaller, out of the way places.  From time to time you can even snag a 5,000 point night, which is just craziness.  So if you play your cards right you can potentially get 7 nights at a Holiday Inn Express, which are usually very modern and clean hotels, for the same price as 1 night at an Indigo.  We always look for these properties.  The Lynchburg hotel was a 10K point night, which is why we were willing to drive about 20 miles off of the parkway to stay there.

When we checked in, the fun started.  This is where the title of today’s blog comes in.  We were given our key and we went up to our room.  Both keys did not work in the door.  The doors usually have three lights on them, a green light which is usually what you see when you put in the key and a yellow and a red light.  We’ve seen the red light before; you get that when you put your key in the wrong room’s door.  We’ve never seen a yellow light before and we never saw what we saw when we put our key in our door.  We got a yellow and red at the same time.  So we tried the other key.  Same thing.  So we tried again.  Same thing.  Chris then got a funny thought: what if yellow and red at the same time meant that the room was locked from the inside.  As if we had the correct key for the room but the deadbolt was being used and the key would therefore not work.  So we knocked.  No answer.  We figured we must just have a bad key.  This has happened before.  It is kind of frustrating but it is not the end of the world.  We went back to the front desk, got a new set of keys and went back upstairs.  This time the first key worked on the first try.  We went in and there in our room was someone’s suitcase and someone’s underwear on the bed.  Luckily there was no one in the room.  That would have been embarrassing.  We quickly shut the door and went back downstairs.  The ladies at the front desk immediately upon seeing us laughed and said “don’t tell me the key isn’t working again”, to which we replied, “it works just fine but someone’s already in that room”.  Their face turned from joking around to “holy crap”.  They were clearly in a state of shock.  Now Chris collects business cards from places we visit and he was about to grab a business card just because they were there, but he figured he would give these girls a heart attack if he picked up a business card with the manager’s name on it right after they gave us someone else’s room.  So we left the business card there, they apologized like 10 times (we thought for a minute we should blackmail them and get maybe extra hotel soaps or maybe even points deposited into our accounts), and they gave us a new room.  We went to our new room, tried the key and it didn’t work!!!!  We tried the other key. Nothing.  We tried the same keys a few more times and finally the door popped open. Just for fun we wanted to see what would happen if one of us went outside and tried to open the door while it was deadbolted from the inside.  We did, and it was yellow/red at the same time.  So that first time there must have been someone in the room and while we were going downstairs to get our keys, they must have left.  Believe it or not, in all the travelling we have done, this is the 3^rd time we have been given a key to someone else’s room.  The first time we walked in on an open room, like today, and the other time it happened the room was not empty..the person was in the shower.  We immediately shut the door and we can only assume they never knew we were there.  We hope no one has ever entered our room while we were not there but given the fact that we’ve done it 3 times to others, we are sure it has happened.  So the moral of the story:  NEVER leave valuables in your hotel room and ALWAYS lock up when you are in there.   Those two extra locks are there for a reason, use them and you won’t have strangers walking in on you.