Last Updated on March 22, 2019 by Terry
It was going to be a great vacation. The clean white beaches of south Alabama. It was the first time we were going off together since our youngest daughter Mikayla was born. She was five. Amanda was the oldest at fourteen. I was forty-four and my wife was, uh, well she went also.
Carla and I had been to Gulf Shores once before, in the summer of 1985. Amanda was with us but she wouldn’t be completely born for a few months yet. She still maintains that she does not remember much about the trip.
I was intent on making this a great trip and I started several months out by reserving our rooms. This was before I started traveling a lot and building points so we had to pay for the rooms. Man, they are proud of those rooms on the beach. There was a nice motel with large rooms right on the beach.
We could afford the pricey rooms for their Sunday through Thursday rates but the Friday and Saturday rates were too high for our budget. And yes, we were arriving Friday mid-day. So, I had to come up with a plan.
I began my internet search of the area. I found a room about a mile from the beach and their weekend rates were equal to the rates we were going to be paying for the rest of the week at the beach side motel. They had pictures and everything. It looked great.
I was surprised that we could get a room this nice for the price on the weekend. Looking back, I remember the old saying, “Some things are too good to be true.”
Too bad I was not able to recognize this Red Flag Warning that was going to be biting me in the uh, you know, later. So, I booked the room.
The big day finally came. With reservations in hand we headed east for one of the prettiest and cleanest areas on the gulf. GPS was not very good back then so I located it on a map and thought I was ready to find our wonderful room that was not on the beach.
Many hours later we crossed the canal heading south to the beach area of Gulf Shores. I began looking for the road we were supposed to turn on. The problem with a map is that it does not show the bird’s eye view very well. The road I was looking for was under the bridge we were crossing to get over the canal.
They were not connected. You had to make several turns to get to that particular road. After a few of those turns my family became restless. I reassured them that I was not lost but merely confused so I pulled into a fire station. I informed my family that a fireman would know exactly where our room was.
He did. The look on his face was worrying the other members of my clan. He looked at my family through the windshield and asked; “Are you sure you want to stay there?”
Trying not to panic I stood tall and replied “Yes.”
I noticed the girls were becoming very afraid due to the questions they were asking me. Carla was now speechless and near paralysis as the horror began to set in. She informed me later that she just knew I had repeated the nightmare I had put her and Amanda through about eight years earlier in Branson, Mo. I had saved us five dollars on a room at Stacey’s Motel just off the strip. A motel near a barbeque joint in a chainsaw movie would have been an upgrade.
I was beginning to feel like a failure as a husband and father (and human being) when we pulled into the driveway of our motel. My fear became reality. I was indeed a failure of the greatest magnitude. We literally had to drive down a hill to get to it. It was inside the levee that exists on both sides of the canal to prevent flooding of the nearby neighborhoods.
I realized that we were suddenly driving into a hole in the ground. Actually, that’s not a fair assessment. Amanda figured it out first. She suddenly proclaimed, “Dad, our motel is in a ditch!”
Fortunately, Carla did not hear this announcement. She had begun to quiver a little as the old memories of Stacey’s came alive. It was apparent that this area came cheap due to the watermarks on the side of the motel. It was about three feet high. That’s how high the normal flooding gets.
My pea brain began to cypher: three-foot mark on the outside would mean three feet high on the inside. Hmm. My mind wandered as I considered the fact that surely, they repainted after every flood. Right? I shuddered and tried not to think about it. I was hoping my family would just think some kids had been drawing graffiti on the walls (which would be plenty to be concerned about).
It became obvious that this was not the motel in the picture I saw on the internet. It was a short narrow structure with rooms facing us. There were nine rooms. The front door of one of the rooms was hanging slightly from its hinges. I quickly told my family that it was not the door to our room. Nor was the one with the homeless looking guy sitting on the ground beside a door smoking something that appeared scary.
I pulled up to the office and got out. I made my wife promise to stay in the car and lock the doors. I still feel bad when I remember the faces of my daughters as I walked away from our vehicle. Mikayla had tears in her eyes. She told me later it was because she was afraid she would never see me again.
I never found out if her fear was that she thought I would be murdered in the office or that her mother would drive away with her and Amanda and simply leave me there.
The manager lady welcomed me as I walked in. My only goal at this point was to get her to cancel my credit card charges so we could move to a different motel. I knew it was past any cancelation deadlines and I knew that she knew that also.
I informed her that the motel did not look like what I had remembered on the internet. She blamed it on the city of Gulf Shores for getting the pictures mixed up on the chamber of commerce’s ads. I felt pretty stupid right about then, realizing that she thought I looked that moronic to believe her story. We debated a few minutes as I was attempting to wear her down and get my money back.
Finally, she insisted on showing me a room. She bragged how clean they were on the inside. I took that to mean that she was very aware of the outside appearance. As we walked outside, I could see through the windshield of our car and see my family huddled together in horror. I knew that they would not stay there for any price and I also knew I was going to have to pay for a room at a better place.
“It’s not fair to hold me to my registration fees with a motel this terrible,” I informed her. (Yelled at her would be a more accurate statement.)
I was desperate now and afraid I was not going to be refunded so I began giving her the business as to how awful her establishment was and asked her what kind of person would keep my money after deceiving me this badly. I never let up berating her all the way to the room.
Finally, she had apparently taken all of the grief and sarcasm she could take from me. Just as we were approaching the first room, she threw her hands up into the air and shouted, “That’s it, I don’t want you here!”
She turned and started back toward the office. I gave a fist pump to my family. They started breathing freely again. After she cancelled my reservation, I ran out the door and jumped into our moving vehicle as my wife had begun to pull away. She spun gravel all the way out of the parking area and exited the ditch.
We found a nice room a couple of miles farther from the beach. We stayed there two nights and then were able to move to a great place on the beach. Overall, we had a wonderful time. I just wish they would let me forget the questionable parts. I have tried for years to get them to understand that a family vacation is about memories and I was certain that they would never forget this one.
For many years after, my family would not let me pick out our motels anytime we were going to stay overnight. And even to this day, after I have booked a room, they look it up themselves to make sure it is acceptable for them.
“Sorry dad, we simply do not trust you.” The Daughters.
And as a family tradition, randomly one of the girls will get my attention, throw her hands up into the air, and shout, “That’s it!”
Ahh the memories, that’s what it’s all about!
