I recently returned from a family vacation where we spent a few days in a cabin in the woods outside of Asheville, North Carolina. I thought I’d share with you my “checking in” story as an example of how not to start a vacation in a relaxing fashion.
When I made the reservations, I told the owner that we’d be coming in between 4 and 5pm. A week or so before we came, I e-mailed to let her know that wasn’t going to be the case and that we’d be coming in later. So, she said she’d leave everything in a packet for us in a “late arrival” bin outside of the office. Sounds good to me, I thought.
We arrived at about 9pm, having decided to have dinner on the road rather than get something in town once we got in. We picked up the packet and I read the note she left us. It said that she’d left the cabin lights on for us and the door unlocked. “Come by at 9:30 in the morning to check in and get your key.” So, we drove around to our cabin, unpacked the car’s contents onto the porch, and went inside. Rather, we tried to go inside.
Instead, our door was locked, our packet didn’t have a key, the office was closed, and my cell phone had no reception. The lights weren’t even on. Oh, and our daughter was announcing that she had to pee.
As I went back to the office to try and knock more loudly on the door hoping their living quarters were nearby, my wife tried the other doors on the cabin to see if they’d been left unlocked. They hadn’t. But, by the time I got back to the cabin, I saw the lights were on, the door open, and my daughter running around feeling much better. Thankfully, being a cabin, the windows weren’t locked, so it was just a matter of my wife popping a window screen, opening the bedroom window, and crawling in. Yay for having a wife that’s good at breaking and entering!
The remainder of the stay went well (aside from 12 hours with no water pressure in the shower), but it took me a while to come down from the blood pressure rise that started when I noticed the door had been locked.
(Workmen had been working on the water earlier in the day and locked the door without the owner knowing.)
Posted in Consumer Commentary, Everyday Life