Stretch Run

The lousy weather has resulted in our "hitch-itch" to worsen. We had rain again yesterday in the form of afternoon thunderstorms, and this morning there is a thick fog. We were busy at work and almost sold out for the second straight night this week. With about three weeks to go, we are about ready to move on. It doesn't matter where we are when we are forced to stay inside.

There was an interesting group that arrived at the lodge yesterday afternoon. There is a group of 12 motorcyclists that are riding from Anchorage, AK, to Argentina. They are taking 105 days for the trip and stopped in Jackson for one night. The entire trip is on their cycles except for one leg where they are scheduled to take a sailboat from Panama to Columbia. What a cool adventure.

It is the time in the season where we get almost as many walk-ins as we do reservations. That creates more work for us at the front desk as we need to gather the same information that is already in a reservation - phone number, address and credit card info. There also seems to be more "grumpy" guests this year. For the last two days, the first hour for us - between 3 PM and 4 PM when the "official" check-in begins - people are angry with us for not having their rooms ready when they arrive. There are signs all over the lobby - and on reservations for the people that have them - that check-in is at 4 PM. For some reason, they take out their frustration on us when they are forced to wait on housekeeping to ready their room. They don't understand that between check-out at 11 AM and check-in at 4 PM, the housekeeping crew has to clean and turn-around up to 170 rooms for the next night. It comes with the territory, I guess.

The fog doesn't seem to be lifting very fast outside and it is 44 degrees. Our heater is running for only about the third time since we arrived, and for the first time since May. The trees will be turning to their Fall colors in the next couple weeks, so we hope to get some pretty pictures of them on our days off...