Internet Hotel Amenities

First of all I want to say that I rarely stay in hotels. When I go on vacation someplace, it's usually somewhere where I can stay at one of the units that's part of Trendwest membership because I know what to expect as far as quality and because since I'm usually on vacation with my family, having a full kitchen & washer / dryer with dining room & living room along with separate bedrooms is very nice. However the few times I have stayed at a hotel, I'm usually too frugal to get anything more than a non-smoking room that's just going to be a bed for the night. I stayed at a couple different hotels on my road trip to & from Yellowstone last September and again it was on my way to or from one of the resorts I mentioned.

Having said that, staying at the less expensive hotels must have spoiled me. I guess I've come to expect certain things from hotels. I don't expect much, if there's a continental breakfast included in the morning, bonus. But even the less expensive hotels I stayed at had free internet like it was just as standard as water, electricity, & toilet paper. So I was unpleasantly suprised to find that places like the Hyatt or the Sheraton in downtown Seattle didn't offer such fancy things. Oh sure you can get it for a daily fee, but I'm not sure I understand how / why the smaller hotels I've stayed at can offer such a simple thing and the larger chains still charge for it even after the room rates they charge you.

For example, a sample room rate per night at the Sheraton where I'm staying is $140. A local hotel near my home has room rates ranging from $50-70. Now of course the quality of rooms is substantially different but I think I'd rather have a lower quality room with internet access than a higher quality room without. Heck, even the public library has free internet for its patrons.

Hear me now downtown city hotel chain establishments, it's time to step up and get with the program. You may be convenient as a downtown location for events and such, but if you're going to charge me an additional fee on top of the room rate you already charge me, so long as I have options, I'll be sleeping elsewhere.

Small World After All

We spent last week in West Yellowstone, MT. It was an awesome trip overall. We drove 750 miles to get there. My parents went in their vehicle as well so we traveled more or less together but separately. Of course we stopped to take tons of pictures. I had my Canon Powershot along with my Panasonic video camera that records on mini-DV tapes. My cameras are several years old as I got them before my kids were born. My little Canon took hundreds of pictures, over 500MB worth. That's nothing compared to what my brother took with my Dad's Canon Digital Rebel. My Dad also filmed a few hours worth of video on his new HD camcorder that saves to flash memory cards. Their photos took 3.6 GB, the video took 207 GB.

We took the north loop in Yellowstone on the first trip into the park. Shortly after going in through the west gate, you can still see by the tall blackened tree remnants just how close the fires of '88 came to West Yellowstone, within 1/2 mile. The park is pretty huge and there's not what I would consider anything like heavy traffic within the park for the most part. However the park does have many visitors every day. Last year, Yellowstone had 3,151,343 recreational visits.

Stay with me, I'm getting somewhere with all this.

We learned quick that if we saw a group of cars pulled over somewhere, especially where people had their cameras out, you'd probably be interested in what they're all taking pictures of too. We happened to be following one of the popular yellow tour busses when in abruptly turned into a large pullout overlooking a large meadow. We found there was a herd of elk feeding there and I got this picture (edited for this post) of the bull elk.


We stayed there for a bit taking pictures and eventually moved on down the road taking pictures of scenery, waterfalls, thermals (hot springs, etc) along the way. Shortly before getting to Norris Geyser Basin we saw this lone Bison / Buffalo chowing down in a large open area beside a narrow river or small creek. We stopped of course, excited to see a real Buffalo and walked down a short path towards the water where we took pictures of the Buffalo on the other side of the water less than 50 yards away. I took this picture (unedited) while standing there.


Initially I felt somewhat safe that this large animal was on the other side of the water and confident that he wouldn't trudge through to charge at me or my family so we didn't feel like we were in any kind of danger. He was alone and not acting any way hostile any way. However, just before I started back up the trail to my vehicle I took a better look and found that the water was probably not even a foot deep. I didn't say anything at the time but got my family calmly back to our vehicle.

My parents and brother had already left in their vehicle to the next spot on the map we had planned to stop while I was getting my kids loaded in the car. This was fine as we were using our handheld transceiver ham radios to keep in contact with each other.

So just as we're putting the kids back in the car, my wife is suprised from behind by my Aunt Nancy asking if we come here often. With her is my Uncle Cal (my Dad's brother) and his daughter (my cousin, born the day or two after me) Kristin, with her two young babies in their car. They're from Marysville, WA. So here we are, over 750 miles from home, and my relatives show up out of nowhere. I get on the radio and let my Dad know I'm talking with his brother & his family and on top of all that, for the last couple days, they had been staying in the cabins right next to where we were staying.

They were actually on their way out of the north entrance of the park and happened to see us on the side of the road. It's one of those situations that makes me ask myself, "What are the chances of something like that happening?" I guess it truly is a small world after all and, no matter where you go, your relatives will find you.