The Good, The Bad and The Beautiful

Feb 11, 2021

The GOOD: As mentioned before, we stayed at Best Western Plus in Tupelo, MS. It was a very nice looking hotel and the receptionist was friendly enough. It was interesting though that when I went to the front desk to get my room, she definitely noticed Kimberly with me. However, she offered a regular double queen bed room. I requested a handicap room and she paused, then said there was only one left. We took it! I should have known by that pause that there was something up, but I was just glad to get a handicap room. But wait, let's focus on the good here, that's what this section is titled. Once to the room, I was floored to find that the door stayed open all on it's own! You wouldn't believe how difficult it is to get that luggage cart thing into a room all by yourself when the door is trying to close in on you. I don't know why the door gets pleasure at knocking off our bags or banging into me as I try to pass. So this friendly door was very much appreciated. Inside the room, I noticed it was nice and roomy. The outlets were located conveniently to accommodate the placement of the chair during the night. Everything has to get plugged in to charge overnight, but the chair also has to be close enough to the bed so that Kimberly can use the vent that's attached to the chair. I have gotten into the habit of bringing a power strip with an extra long cord (and an extension cord in case the outlet selection is really poor). Another thing I try to do is check out the room BEFORE unpacking the luggage cart and getting Kimberly settled on the bed. Nothing's worse than doing all of that before noticing the room isn't as clean as you want and having to pack it all back up and change rooms. So I checked out the room, the beds and the bathroom to find it all clean. So to summarize, the good qualities were the large space, the cleanliness, and the friendly door.

The BAD: Okay, was anyone wondering what that pause meant? Maybe nothing, but I do wonder. After carefully inspecting the room and finding it clean, I went ahead and laid Kimberly down on the bed and also took the bags off the cart. I plugged a couple of things in to start the charging process. The room was a little chilly, so I turned up the heat. Then we noticed the remote didn't work. I called down to the front desk and she said she would send up a replacement. About 20 minutes goes by, no new remote. It's at this time that I also noticed that the room is not heating up. So I called down to the front desk again. She said that she is sorry but she's too busy to bring the remote and asks that I come down. I mentioned the heater and she said there was no one there to look at it, but the last time this happened to her (hmmm, the last time...was it in this room.... is that why you paused......) she just turned it up to about 80 and it started warming up. Okay. So I went down to exchange the remote, only to find out it just didn't have batteries in it and when I mentioned the heat problem again, she said to give it about 30 minutes and then she would switch me rooms if it wasn't warming up. So I went back up and sure enough, the heater never got warm. So it's about 8:00, I went back down to get some new keys and think to check out the room before going to back to pack things up. The room seems fine and still roomy enough even though it is not a handicap room. I went back to my room, put the bags back on the cart, unplugged everything, grabbed Kimberly's refrigerated medicine that I had unpacked already and transferred Kimberly back to her chair. Then we made the trek to the new room on a different floor. The room was already a toasty 74 degrees so we were happy. The remote also worked, double bonus. I laid Kimberly back down, unloaded the cart, unpacked the chargers and things we needed for the night. Then I went to put her medicine in the little frig, only to find that it did not work. You've got to be kidding. Another thing to add to the list of checks before unloading everything. Luckily, the cold pack was still frozen so I just kept it in it's travel bag. Finally, my last complaint would be that the water pressure in the shower was definitely a let down. Needless to say, this hotel will be passed by the next time we are traveling in that direction.

The BEAUTIFUL: I thought I would end each of my posts with something that strikes me as beautiful. It may not be obvious and I may not always be able to explain it clearly, but I'm going to try. One thing that was beautiful in the first couple days of this trip was God taking care of us. Our journey was uneventful, with no scary moments or bad weather. It was great. Also, at the hotel, when I finally got everything situated and we were ready to turn in, I realized that I had forgotten the distilled water down in my van. Ugh, how is this God's work you ask? I went to the car to find that one of the side doors had not shut all the way when I had unpacked the car. It was stuck open about 1.5 feet. I was in such a hurry to get back to Kimberly up in the room that I just hit the button to shut the door, but didn't wait to see that it shut all the way. It always shuts all the way. I don't know why it didn't close, but it didn't. It had probably been open for a couple of hours, but nothing had been stolen; all seemed okay. Thankfully, God made sure I had to go back to find this possible catastrophe. There wasn't a lot of stuff left in the car, but enough that if someone just took it, we would have had to turn back and go home. The other thing that I think is Beautiful was Kimberly's review of the hotel. She thought it was fine with only the remote and heater being an issue. It didn't bother her to have to switch rooms, she didn't feel my frustration, she took it all in stride.

Thanks for joining Kimberly and me as we travel around. Please keep the comments and suggestions coming!