Worst hotel, best rest stop

Mood: good
Weather: awesome spring weather

Lars and I headed out to Minot on Friday night and made the 8 hour trip in 7.5 and that includes getting gas and drive threw dinner. So we arrived at an apparently nice hotel at 2am. Here is the rundown of what is in a 'Vegas of the Midwest' upgraded hotel room; 2 king size beds - not a bad start, but there really isn't enough room for 2 twins so the king size beds were 8 inches from each wall with a 2 foot space inbetween the two. To make it more claustrophobic, there was a huge wardrobe thing that dominated the wall at the end of the beds, it had no purpose because the places designed to hold clothing did not have hangers. Our room wasn't vacuumed but I don't blame the maid, I don't' think there was enough room to run a vacuum. To make the room look bigger, the wall (floor to ceiling) was mirrored. Next highlight; the toilet had 'issues' good thing it was only an overnight. The cherry of the evening was the constant broken pump sound that went on allll night and kept me simi awake half because it was loud, half because I was mad. Next morning upon check out the girl blew me off completely - still a little mad, but the rest of the event made up for it.

The SCA is an odd thing, sometimes events are dull and people ignore you and sometimes they are too much and you can't get to talk to everyone you want to. This one was perfect sized, I saw lots of people I know and like and got a chance to hang out with them. Lars won the tournment so we stayed for the feast and had an awesome day but since you could not pay me to stay another night there we hit the road. We got as far as Fargo and god bless motel six or hotel eight, don't remember what one we stayed at but it was so nice - neat, clean, quiet - what a place to sleep needs to be.

I grew up going to lots of events so I have seen almost every rest stop on the east coast and inland to the Ohio border and now I'm touring the Midwest with Lars' unwonder bladder so we see plenty here. I have to give major compliments to the this rest stop, I can't remember the name but it is about 50 miles into MN on route 94. It is a small facility but super clean, very nice looking and it has three lakes around it with a bunch of picnic tables and flower beds. It is more like a park then a rest stop. Anyway, it is a new benchmark.

This week so far is quiet - next weekend is another SCA event and the weekend after my friend from home is visiting so hopefully I can get the guest room a bit nicer.