Songbird76
Well-Known Member
Yeah, motel 6 usually isn't great. They are a budget option, and while Wyoming has no large cities, there are still a few of the bigger towns that have seedy parts of town and any hotel in that part of town is going to be less than stellar. And I get that he wants to save money, but it's not the same as it is over here. Most of the towns in Wyoming won't have a big hotel with the interior hallways...there just isn't enough demand. It will be a bunch of those small, exterior entrance motels if they have a motel at all. And many of them won't have any motels at all, so you have to stay somewhere "nearby", which could be 50 miles away. But any of those little motels in a small town is probably at least decent. They won't have a bad part of town and if the motel was gross, they'd go out of business. They aren't fancy, but they don't need to be....they cater to people passing through on their way to Yellowstone, or the Bighorn Mountains, etc. They just need a place to sleep for a night before traveling further...most of those places are not destinations themselves. Who goes on vacation to Dubois Wyoming? No one. But places like Casper and Cheyenne, and even Gillette and Laramie are large enough to have many hotels to choose from, and to have bad places in town. You probably aren't likely to experience a drive-by shooting, but there will be drug activity and unsavory individuals...you could get mugged or whatever. So you want to be careful in places like that, just like you would in Paris, or in Berlin, etc. It's not all catered to tourists the way the smaller towns are.I've been trying so hard to get my health back on track after letting things get out of control. I was truly scared that this summer would upend all of my hard work. Trying to keep losing over the course of 7+ weeks of travel seemed daunting and sort of hopeless, but I feel like I've accomplished something even greater now that I managed to keep losing and still have a little bit of food/drink enjoyment along the way.
I remember that hotel issue from your travels. Yeah, it's just not safe or sanitary (at least in the US) to book the kinds of things he wanted. I understand the price concern, but you get what you pay for...in most cases. Yeah, that's definitely part of the challenge with our travel. I don't know all of the parts of town in the places we go but I do research semi-heavily to make sure the places I'm booking have good customer reviews. Motel 6 is usually an absolute no for me as I have yet to see one that isn't somewhere between gross and scary. We have stayed at a couple of Days Inns that were teetering on the edge of questionable but again, I use long term review data against pricing and location to help make my choices. Onsite laundry is a must if we're traveling for softball, but I have also been lucky because some of our friends rent houses and will at least help us out with washing uniforms. I will say that we usually have to go up to something that's really pricey per night to get a decent hotel gym. None of the ones this summer were great, but on days when I was short for time, having one with a working elliptical and/or treadmill as well as some weights helped.
Some of the tournaments we play are "stay to play," but it's such a pain and so many in our group prefer renting houses that we've bought out of the requirement over the last couple of years. So, we just scatter and stay wherever. Sam's closest friends all rent houses but she's always been a bit hesitant about staying together. It was determined (recently) but some of the other parents that we all need to be staying together. So, I see us all in a house for future trips.
I think you did really well to lose weight while traveling. So much depends on the availability of healthy foods. That's one thing I will say for Disney, Universal, etc....it's easy to find good food, rather than just the standard burgers and hotdogs most theme parks offer. There was really NOTHING yesterday that was remotely healthy. It's all pastries, ice cream, burgers, and fried snacks for the most part. Even their TS restaurants are very limited.