Cabin Fever Cure
By Pamelagrace Beatty
We were off for a weekend holiday. My fiancé, Mike, is very good at agreeing to take me somewhere local for a stay in a hotel, in a small town, when I start to get severe signs of cabin fever. Cabin fever looks like pacing, frowning, not talking and some degree of irritability, usually directed at him. It’s much better to just take me somewhere and let me loose.
We decided to go to Port Townsend which is a ferry ride away. We’d been there before and we liked it. We got to the ferry well ahead of departure time, which they recommend, along with making reservations. This gave us a chance to relax and breathe after the scurry of packing and getting out of the house. Mike packed the night before. I was the one who scurried to finish packing. He’s more organized than I am.
It was a nice day on our side of the ferry. However, when we arrived in Port Townsend it was quite windy and rather cold. We had reservations in one of the quaint old hotels that Port Townsend has several of right in downtown. As we stepped out into the wind, we zipped up our coats and embarked on the adventure of finding the hotel.
Red or Blue?
The photo of the hotel I saw was a red building. Mike remembered it as a blue building and ignored my saying the building was red. We found the blue building, which was not a hotel, even though it had three floors and could have been. After driving another block, we found the red building and were delighted. This was it! We parked near the hotel got out of our truck and leaned into the wind and the cold, dragging our luggage behind us. Next challenge, find the lobby. There were lots of doors but none of them led to a lobby. Finally, we found a door into a shop of indigenous people’s artifacts and art. It looked like a store. It turned out to be the hotel lobby.
When we couldn’t open the door, we saw the note that said: “Be back in 10 minutes.” We wondered why someone would leave the lobby at check-in time? It was windy and cold. We had schlepped our bags all the way to the hotel and schlepping them back to the truck and then dragging them back to the hotel again, didn’t appeal. We decided to brave the cold and wind and wait until the hotel clerk came back to check us in.
She finally came, looking a bit windblown, and said she had to take her dog for a walk. Again, we wondered why she couldn’t have anticipated that before check-in time. She opened the door and we entered into the lobby/shop. There was a desk and a computer for checking guests in. She sat down and searched, and then said she couldn’t find us.“Leave NOW!” flashed through my mind. Mike had a copy of our reservation which he whipped out of his coat pocket and showed her. That helped her to find us and she confirmed there was a queen-size bed in the room. Once again Mike, who had put the confirmation back in his coat pocket, whipped it out and showed her that there was supposed to be a king-size bed in the room. She mumbled something about not really knowing what was going on but giving it her best.
Stairs. Lots of Stairs
Both of us were becoming less and less impressed with this hotel. “Leave Now” flashed through my mind again. Finally, she checked us in and gave us one key. She asked us if we wanted two keys and I said “No not really, but then again maybe it would be helpful to have two keys.” At which point the clerk said, “Sorry I can’t give you two keys; the last people who stayed in that room ran off with our spare.” Sooooo, why ask? My concern about having made a bad decision on this hotel popped up yet again. She pointed to a side door in the “lobby” and said “Your room is up the stairs behind that door. Up the stairs? Uh oh.
I confess that when I read about the hotel online, it mentioned that there was no elevator. It did NOT mention that the hotel had three floors. Nor did we know that our room would be on the third floor, and we would be dragging our luggage, our cooler, and Mike’s camera equipment up four flights of stairs (56 steps) to get to our room! Nope, we did not know that. Although we both exercise and Mike has stairs in his house, Four flights were not what we were used to climbing; or at least not while dragging and carrying heavy luggage. The second floor came after two flights of 28 stairs. Our floor had the rest of the 56 stairs!
When we got to the third floor, we both had to lean against the wall for a minute. Then comes the next bit of fun. The key doesn’t work. Mike jabbed, turned, pushed, grumbled and swore. Then he turned, pushed, grumbled, and swore some more. I was afraid the door would give out because it was so old, and Mike was pushing so hard. But it didn’t. Mike gave up in frustration and decided we would have to tell the clerk the key didn’t fit. As he started down the stairs, I suggested we just call down to the front desk but no, he wanted to tell her about the key problem in person. So, he tramped down the stairs, found the hotel clerk and she came back up with him with a new key. It didn’t work either because it was a key to the bottom lock! Not the top. I asked her, “Can’t you just put us in another room?”
The top lock was the problem. She mentioned something about somebody locking the top lock and they weren’t supposed to do that. Oh really? While Mike was going to find her, I wandered around looking for a place to sit. I was tired after all that stair climbing. I tried every door on that floor. The bottom door handle wiggled but all of the top locks were locked.
It was obvious to me that the hotel was not full. I had already gone around to all of those rooms and checked the doors. I did find one room with the door unlocked. It was a lovely suite and I made myself comfortable in it while waiting for Mike and the hotel clerk to come back. She said she couldn’t change our rooms without the manager’s permission. “Rats,” I thought. She would have to go back downstairs to find the manager and yet another key. She tramped back down the stairs and Mike went with her to find the manager. I, on the other hand, went to the one room I found open and sat down again in a nice, comfortable chair to wait for the drama to end. Our room, “Room 21,” was becoming a big problem.
The hotel clerk ultimately found the manager and got the door open after jiggling, pushing and finally LUBRICATING the top lock. This all took an hour. Right about the time the lock turned, we were about to leave to find another hotel. I had already found two hotels online that had vacancies. In fact, we were in the midst of telling her ‘Never mind, we’re going to another hotel’ when the door clicked open.
The room was large and airy, with lots of light, a refrigerator, microwave, coffee pot, TV, WIFI, and the king-size bed. It was covered in a clean white comforter. I like fluffy white comforters. It means clean to me. We were good sports. We let go of the Room 21 issues and stayed. From that point on, whenever something didn’t go right during our trip, we said, “Uh oh, another Room 21 experience,” and we’d laugh.
All Good, or Mostly
We walked around the town hoping to find a bookstore that would agree to sell Mike’s newly printed book, Whidbey Beards – about men with unique beards, in their store. Although the store managers admired the book, no one was willing to stock the book in their store. Room 21 strikes again. What went well was talking to two artists and their friends, eating in the various restaurants, getting lots of exercise walking around town. We also liked chatting with store owners, and the one beautiful day we had when the cold and wind let up and deer were out grazing in yards.
Talking to the artists was my favorite part, and Mike was a good sport about listening to conversations about painting techniques and selling art. Mike is a photographer but is curious about the thoughts of painters. Two of the artists had their own galleries which was pretty cool. I can’t imagine having my own gallery! One of the artists, Don Tiller, was married to Jolene Sunding who is also an artist. Her work was shown in the gallery as well. It was delightful to look at both styles and ask questions. The artist’s wife wasn’t in the store, but we got all kinds of information about how they met and how they came to Port Townsend. I’m nosy that way. I always want to know how folks met. They are always willing to tell me. It’s fun to hear the different stories. I wanted to come back and meet his wife and talk with her. Her name intrigued me. I remember a rock and roll song that used it. We will have to do that next time.
The second artist, Milo, was very bohemian. I loved that. His studio was where he also painted. He was dressed in casual clothes he wouldn’t mind getting paint all over, which is what he had done. He had longish hair and was wearing a hat. He had some striking abstracts hanging on the wall, and a number of paintings on canvas which hadn’t been stretched onto a frame and probably weren’t going to be. This was a little unusual; most artists I know have the canvases on frames. Milo said they were easier to ship without frames and were less costly to the buyer who could get them framed themselves. Being in his gallery and talking with him reminded me of when I was a flight attendant in New York and used to go to Greenwich Village and hang out with the artists, poets, and musicians. That was so cool. I didn’t paint or sing back then but being around artists was very exciting and entertaining!
During our second afternoon visiting Milo several of his friends dropped by. Mike and I had some interesting and engaging conversations with them all. I loved it. We talked about all sorts of things. One young man had just quit his job. We found out why and I encouraged him to go for what he really wanted to do next time. Another friend was rather recently retired and was thinking about what to do now that he had free time to pursue new adventures. We discussed various topics with him and touched a bit on politics. The third friend was Milo’s marketing guy. He helped Milo make money as an artist by marketing his work to galleries and more. What a cool thing! We talked about this friend’s hip-hop past, his epiphanies about life, and how he had shifted to a different perspective. I found all the conversations fascinating. We didn’t let the Room 21 experience dampen our appreciation of the town at all.
I love eating out. The different restaurants we ate in were little adventures all to themselves. We ate in one rather expensive one that had great food and atmosphere. It was most romantic with white tablecloths and jazz playing softly in the background. The food was delicious! I had an excellent Alfredo pasta dish. Mike had scallops and pasta. The next night we went to a Japanese restaurant that was recommended by Milo’s friends. We had a bit of a Room 21 experience there.
The restaurant was packed with people,which was a good sign. But it took a long time to get our food…only to find out they had prepared the wrong dish and it took over an hour for us to get our orders. But the food was delicious and we would go back there again. We also ate in a 60s-theme diner, which I loved. I am very fond of diners that look like “The Fonz” era. Mike had a great milkshake there. We had prawns and chips which were pretty good although the best thing to have in a diner, as far as I am concerned, is a cheeseburger and fries. I ordered prawns trying to make up for all the calories I consumed in the fancy restaurant.
We took photographs, of course. Mike took some delightful pictures. You can see them in this blog. I took photos too, which are NOT in this post for good reason. Hopefully, I will get better as a photographer in the future.
I liked getting all the exercise while walking, and the fresh windy air enlivened us both. Three days later when it was time to go home, we were walking up the four flights of stairs in the hotel with ease.
We will go back. We want to visit the artists again and try some different restaurants. Meanwhile, we highly recommend Port Townsend for a vacation or holiday. Regardless of the time of year and the weather, it is a delightful place to visit. Oh, except for when it snows. Don’t go when it snows…the entire town shuts down! Major Room 21 kind of thing. LOL
