Today’s throw-back is about how a hotel can be more than just a place to stay.
I’ve been travelling through Florida over the last week and a half, staying in a mix of hotels and stopping at a variety of kitschy cool tourist traps along the way.
Example:
The Fountain of Youth in St. Augustine, Florida
As I had a chance to really appreciate my surroundings on this trip and take in the unique flavor of each, I noticed how every hotel has a mood. Every room has a certain feel to it when you open the door. The air is thicker or thinner, or has the faint smell of 20 year old cigarette smoke (even in a non-smoking room) mixed with Pleadge. And we all know how smells can evoke memories of days gone by…
I walked into my room in Boca Rotan and suddenly I was six years old walking into a room near Silver Dollar City (now Dollywood) in Pigeon Forge. This was a Marriott, but it smelled just like my Dad’s favorite Howard Johnson nestled in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. If I’d closed my eyes, I would have sworn it was 1985 all over again.
See, I was a HoJo-Cracker Barrel kid. This meant whether it was King’s Island or Cedar Point, Gatlinburg or Gurney Mills, my Dad was always seeking our stay to be at a Howard Johnson Inn. I don’t know why, but we all knew that’s where we would be staying if there was one nearby. Of course all we kids cared about was whether or not it had a pool. We were always cramming at least six of us into a double room. The limit was four, you know, without incurring extra charges. Purposely or not, my Dad would always request a room on the ground floor. This allowed two of us to grab our sleeping bags and quickly sneak in ahead of the others without being seen.
We also ate at Cracker Barrel for breakfast if it wasn’t included with our stay. Since I can remember, pretty much every disaster that could go wrong in a restaurant has happened to us at a Cracker Barrel somewhere or other along the way(i.e. dirty dishware, hairs in the grits, terrible service, you get the idea). Yet every vacation, without fail, my siblings and I would inevitably find ourselves fighting to play that wooden triangle mind game that declares who’s a genius and who’s a total moron. (Don’t believe them if they say they were geniuses. I know for a fact that that’s not true.)
Anyway, entering these two establishments declared we, the Gross Family, were on a journey. Our vacations were always road trips and reminiscent of something out of the National Lampoon’s latest flick. We piled into the station wagon and drove off to exotic places like Disney World and Texas. We stopped at underground caves and Presidential birthplaces. We had run-ins with bears, rode world-record breaking roller coasters and crashed head first in to waves from the Atlantic sea.
Four of us in front of a well somewhere. I’m so sassy in this one.
Three of us a King’s Island in Cincinnati, Ohio. One of our favorite stops. I’m the cute one with the pigtails everyone would want to take home.
Three of us and a cousin visiting Cherokee. This was another favorite stop.
It looks like four of us at a zoo. The one in the stroller now has a kid of her own doing the exact same thing to her. Karma, man. It always comes back.
Dad and three of us on our favorite log ride at Silver Dollar City.
Mom and four of us, again, on our favorite log ride at Silver Dollar City. We rode that thing a million times.
My siblings and I shared in some of the best memories a mind can make, thanks to our folks and their dedication to an annual getaway, no matter how tight times would be. We also shared in teasing, screaming, pinching, shoving, biting, hitting, pulling, and wet-willies (yeah, I know). But we always felt home when we stepped inside that HoJo.
I swear my parents avowed every year “never again” after safely returning home from our crazy escapades, yet, like clockwork, the next summer we’d find our Dad looking at that road atlas and our Mom pulling out those Howard Johnson brochures. And when we eventually walked into that hotel room, wherever it was, no matter how musty or ragged a room it may have been, that smell let us know we were ready for our next adventure. HoJo – our home away from home.
