Our guys are nearing their destination. Little by little, sunny California is approaching David, Jason, and Otto. However, don’t think that being southwest of Michigan means that their misery is done. I just got off a call with them and conditions somehow haven’t improved much. The Mustang is chewing through tires, they stayed in what sounds like the worst motel in America, and it sounds like Otto wants to ride in the Golden Eagle while it’s on the trailer? Road madness is setting in as David’s terrible move continues westward.
Jason has informed me that their starting point of this leg was Weatherford, Oklahoma. Their southern route is taking them even further south than I expected. Jason told me that for this leg, their destination was Sante Fe, New Mexico. It’s a route stretching about 464 miles that saw them rolling through the top of Texas. And, amusingly, our team couldn’t even get their day started without some sort of shenanigans.
Jason Tries To Convince A Completely Wrong Hotel To Give Him Shampoo
Jason told me that their departure hotel didn’t have shampoo. At first, he figured that it wouldn’t be that big of a deal and that he could pick some up from a gas station. Apparently, he was wrong because he couldn’t find any shampoo at a convenience store. That’s when he concocted a brilliant idea: What if he walked into a more expensive hotel and asked for shampoo? Jason did just that, and walked into a Holiday Inn, asking the front desk for shampoo, claiming that his room didn’t have any. Unfortunately for him, the front desk didn’t buy it.
Also, if a Holiday Inn is a major upgrade, then you know that our guys are staying in some dirt-cheap accommodations. I’m not sure these guys have a price floor. And trust me, it’s going to get way worse!
David Burns Rubber
David was a man on a mission on Day Four. He had nearly died just the day before as a result of shower spaghetti and apparent cubic feet of mashed potatoes. We’re still not entirely sure why David effectively consumed a bucket of mashed potatoes, but his stomach hated him for his life choices. Despite all of this, Jason says that David was more energetic now than at any other point in this trip.
See, about seven hours away in Sante Fe was a person that David wanted to meet. This person is someone that David was far more interested in meeting than even the seller of the best holy grail Jeep on Earth. The motivation to see this person was so great that David increased his speed in the Mustang from 60 mph to perhaps 75 mph. Neither Jason nor David knows for sure how fast he was driving, but David says that the anticipation of meeting this person easily added 10 horses to his old pony car.
In fact, he suggests doing a drag race with someone you want to meet at the end of the track. You’ll easily gain free horsepower!
Unfortunately for him, the Mustang wasn’t nearly as excited about this as he was. At the beginning of this trip, David said that his brother’s 1966 Ford Mustang was wrapped in Douglas tires that were awful in anything but dry weather. Apparently, they also have alarming tire wear, too. The Mustang apparently has control arm bushings of the Bluetooth variety, and the suspension and steering need to be freshened before it could get an alignment. That means the car is just grinding down the tires.
In an effort to increase the longevity of those tires, David and Jason pulled off to swap the rear tires with the fronts. Despite their southerly position, things were still bitterly cold, and Jason made sure to emphasize how much it sucks to swap wheels when it’s cold and windy. It was a simple job made miserable by more of that relentless cold that they’d been facing for the whole trip. Also, the Mustang looks the way it does because David has a lot of junk in his trunk, and dirty hands…
Jason also tells me that during one of their stops, David encountered other people trying to fix a car, and he fed them hot dogs. During this trip, David and Jason have noticed that people seem to react more to the Golden Eagle than the Mustang. Lots of people have said something about the Golden Eagle, but the Mustang didn’t get any attention until some totally sloshed guy came over while David was swapping the wheels.
Jason Suffers In The Wagoneer
In our call, I asked Jason about how the Wagoneer is doing. As it turns out, Jason was able to fix the CarPlay issue, and all it took was for the infotainment system to crash, necessitating a hard reset. Apparently, just crashing your Stellantis infotainment system will fix it. Jason described the situation as annoying, to say the least. That’s when David countered with something that surprised us.
Jason, Otto, and I learned something about David during the call. The Mustang doesn’t have a radio of any kind. That means David is just sitting there, driving the Mustang in a direction. He describes the experience of driving the ‘Stang down the highway to be similar to sitting at a desk and doing nothing at all. Jason and I begged him to buy some headphones or something because holy hell, that sounds boring. But David is determined to drive this whole thing in dead, cold silence. Clearly, road madness is setting in for both Jason and David. It seems to me that Otto is holding the group together.
Discovering Cadillac Ranch And A Scaled-Up Dodge Caravan
When our team reached Amarillo, Texas, Jason and Otto checked out one of the most famous roadside attractions in America. Much ink has been spilled about the fabled Cadillac Ranch and its buried vehicles-turned-art pieces. The tailfins of these vintage American autos have pointed to the sky since 1974 and have served as an art installation for anyone who encounters it. Jason and Otto wanted to leave their mark but found themselves unable to access the parts they wanted.
While the father and son duo were exploring that American landmark, David was supposed to be buying new shoes. But he already had shoes, so he went exactly nowhere. Yes, it seems that on every one of the Autopian’s recent trips, David has found himself in need of at least one piece of clothing. See, David has clothes, but they’re all oil-stained from top to bottom, terrible if you need to look clean at a destination. Perhaps with enough time, he’ll get an entire outfit!
Later, they happened upon this USA Corporation Europa. So far as I could find with various models for sale, this RV manufacturer took Dodge and Chevrolet chassis and built RVs on top of them. What we’re looking at here is the Dodge version, and the front end is an absolute giggle.
It’s almost like the company took the front end of a Dodge Grand Caravan and decided to scale it up.
Power comes from a Dodge V8 and the interior is also a smattering of the Dodge parts bin. And yes, the company was really called “USA Corporation.” Has there been a more generic company name?
Our Team Sleeps In The Worst Motel In America
Thus far, this entry hasn’t been so bad. A lot worse could have happened! Well, buckle up, because David’s love for everything cheap ends up biting them all in the arse.
David, Jason, and Otto planned to stop at a motel for their night stop. Online, this hotel was advertised at a bottom of the barrel $58 a night. When David called the motel, the price then raised to $75. But hey, $75 for a room with two beds is still cheap, so they continued. But when they got there, the price went up to $100. Tired, our team lifted a Benjamin from their pockets and got their room. And…I’m not sure I’ve heard of a worse motel in this entire country.
Jason started off by calling the motel a total craphole. He provided me pictures but followed them up by saying that they just don’t do the motel justice. Somehow, everything was terrible. For starters, when they opened the door, they immediately noticed that the floor was parabolic. At no point was the floor level, and that jacked up all of the furniture. Every bit of furniture sat at an angle, sloping toward wherever the floor took them.
Ok, that’s weird enough, but then they noticed that everything else in the motel room was also crooked. Every light switch was crooked, as were the outlets, and Jason even noted an outlet that was completely hanging out of the wall.
This is when David chimed in to say that everything was so crooked that the shade on a lamp was sitting at a good 30-degree angle. Guys, I think you rented a funhouse for the night!
Jason said that everything in the room was so low quality it was if the room had a level of contempt about it. The room was like if the owners of the motel intentionally tried to figure out what was the least they could get away with and still sell you a room. I mean, they even used the same Goodwill artwork for both beds!
There was spackle all over the place, splashes of paint that even a colorblind person could tell was the wrong color, weird poorly-repaired holes in the wall, and random wall repairs that don’t match and don’t make any sense. There was also a closet that didn’t actually have an end to it, just another opening. Oh, and apparently there was a side room of some kind, and it bafflingly had just a closet, a desk, and a sink.
Otto notes that it was like a prison and nothing worked well. The beds felt itchy and they had to check for bedbugs. They’re fairly certain that they didn’t find any, but things looked sketchy. Otto said that everything was so cheap there was no Dr. Pepper. Instead, the vending machines served generic drinks like Dr. Thunder.
Ah, and I forgot something. Apparently, the cops came by at 1 in the morning, asking Jason why he was sitting in the motel’s parking lot. That sounds about right for a hotel like this.
More Bad Ideas, And Do They Know Where They’re Going?
During this conversation, Jason and David made a large number of comments about the position of the sun. It seems that they weren’t entirely sure whether they were headed east or west, and neither of them seemingly knew where the sun’s position was. I’m not sure how you lose track of the sun on a clear day, but that sounds like what happened, and it took them quite a bit of time to figure out that they were headed in the correct direction. Like I said, road madness…
I also asked about the Jeep Golden Eagle, and that took them on a whole different tangent. Jason and David said that Otto wanted to ride in the Golden Eagle. And, well, there is a photo of Otto eying up the beast of a rig. But while the pair were talking about that, Otto cut in and said that he absolutely did not want to ride in the Golden Eagle.
David and Jason countered by saying oh no, he totally did want to ride in the Golden Eagle. To settle this debate, Otto took the phone and told me that he’d love to sit in the driver seat because it looks cool and it’s sort of stupid, but he declined because he didn’t think that there would be any WiFi. That’s when Jason assured him that he could ride in the driver seat of the Golden Eagle, there definitely will be WiFi, and they’ll tow the Golden Eagle around a parking lot or something with him in it.
So, uh, I guess that’s going to be a thing!
Our band of heroes expect to reach David’s new apartment by Saturday. However, because of reasons best explained by just saying “California,” the power company will not be turning on his apartment’s power until Tuesday. That means that David will be living like a caveman through the weekend and part of next week. He’s still not sure how that’s going to work out, but he’s pretty sure he’s going to be sitting in his powerless apartment while it rains outside.
Thus, somehow, the entirety of David’s move will be miserable in some way, which is totally on-brand. The team tells me that their next stop is Omega Mart in Las Vegas before doing the final leg. Then, David will be home. From our team in the field and from me, we wish you a happy start to your New Year! We will return in 2023 with even more fun. Since their journey isn’t over yet, watch it go down on our social media pages.
Before this whole thing started, I wanted to meet with and hang out with David; maybe enlist his help in wrenching on my truck or something.
Now? Shower spaghetti, consuming yards of mashed potatoes on a road trip, hours of silence with only the noise of the road to keep you company?
I mean, I thought he was just eccentric. Travelling across the country to get twrenchfoot and rescue an old jeep? Cool, nice success story. Travel to Oz and do the same minus the ailment? Awesome.
Now I’m looking at those and all the others in a different light. I’m starting to wonder if he is completely there.
“Oh, and apparently there was a side room of some kind, and it bafflingly had just a closet, a desk, and a sink.”
I think that’s the space where you fix your hair, put on makeup or pop zits so you don’t have to wait for someone to finish taking a dump in the bathroom.
I have stayed in awful motels and spent the night on park benches when I was homeless. Looking at those pictures and reading the description I think I’d take the park bench instead. The chance of getting stabbed is probably the same as being in that motel. Jesus Christ. Charge me more for my membership if it means that they can at least stay in a Holiday Inn!!
The obvious for no radio is to use your phone and have a powerbank handy, as I’m reasonably sure that Mustang doesn’t have a USB port. But I’ve found in my part time job of driving preproduction vehicles, one of which had no radio, that a $10 radio worked fine for football or NPR listening.
Never ever stay in sketchy motels. It’s no time to be cheap. I cringe thinking of what a blacklight would reveal on those bedspreads
Worst hotel stay: Yakima WA. Country band twangin’ & drawlin’ in the bar downstairs ’til 2 am. Then a distraught patron in the parking lot ballin’ and moanin’, yellin’ out to all who would listen (we sorta had to): “She left me! She leftme!!” On and on . . .
The kicker was a newspaper article about a week later: a couple had awakened after a night in the same hotel and, reaching for their shoes, discovered the body of a woman that had been missed by Housekeeping!
Rough town.
Ever since my wife has me go ahead into any new room and check under the bed before she’ll enter.
Looking to the future, after these maniacs get to LA, I’d love love to see DTs infinitely patient landlord post about the disaster left behind.
Spaghetti in the shower, oil in the dishwasher, wheel ruts in the grass, and whatever bits and pieces he missed.
I know I’d never get my deposit back….
No update for 2 days, I’m getting worried. There is just to much which could go wrong. Either with the cars or the people. I would probably go insane after staying with David for a few hours in a crappy motel.
I know how you feel. I had a nightmare last night where the beat up suv I was driving had a bad front tire and the sidewall was worn almost through, sending me across the centerline. The guys are probably ok, just worn out from the trip and catching up on sleep.
But then Mercedes could have given an update. Or did she dash off to rescue Torch and Otto from “cabin fever” David?
Well, it’s likely they are sleeping the trip off after barely making Cali.
The other alternatives could be increasingly worse. Broken down, making repairs. Or a more kinetic misadventure, resulting in major rescue.
I prefer to think they made it, but anything is possible.
Remember, they have no power until Tuesday ( if the estimate is accurate), much less internet.
So does David have a rule about doing every road trip with misaligned wheels?
Too bad about the cheapo-depot motel! If you would have passed 200 miles due north of Weatherford, you boys could have stayed here free, had a nice meal, AND used my heated shop to address any halfway point misgivings with the Mustang!
Pro tip though – spend money YOU DON’T HAVE to stay in a decent hotel. I’ve stayed in my share of shitholes that made me think the pillow was an albino roach – and I learned from that!
You’d think that spending extra on a nicer hotel would reduce the chance of bedbugs, but it is no guarantee. I have unfortunately been exposed to them twice in the part 3 years, and the hotels were decent enough chains and looked clean. My theory is that during the pandemic, these rooms stayed unused for a long time, and no one noticed the problem until it got REALLY bad (when my unlucky self stayed there). Luckily I noticed them before I checked out in both cases, being able to provide proof on the spot to management and was able to take the needed precautions to avoid bringing the little bastards home. Apparently they are getting more and more prevalent as they are developing resistance to chemicals, so watch out! I still stress out every time I have to go anywhere for work. Yuck!
Naw! There was a bedbug outbreak in the U.S. before COVID, and they are hearty-enough to survive the shut-downs.
I can confirm that bedbugs can be anywhere. We got our one, way too long infestation staying at a nicer, conference hotel in the outer DC area.
A Holiday Inn Express is like $120 a night. That $20 is well worth a 80% reduction in chance of bedbugs, much less the fact that those terrible wall patches look like the place used to be a crime scene, and I’ll go ahead and assume that the carpet and shower would compete to see who would give you a bad fungus first.
This reminds me of the Sam Vimes “Boots” Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness.
Plus one for the Discworld reference. Vimes is my favorite character, usually.
Hmm yeah, maybe it’s good that the mustang is squatting, I can only imagine what the tire wear would be like with the total weight on the front end!
David’s a good writer and gonzo journalist. For the story to be about shitbox motels and shitbox cars, and epic road crazy, he has to live that experience. It’s great for us. I’m not sure it’s great for him. Maybe someday he’ll be gonzo-ing about mansions and models .
But I’m a fan.
M
I hope David finds a partner who can keep him healthy and happy. I worry that his current, entertaining life choices might catch up to him. That said, I’m REALLY interested to see what antics California David will be up to.
Can he pair up with a financier and form a Wheeler-Dealer type of partnership? Think of all of the low-rust projects he could experience!
(Did I just make a vague reference to David Tracy being a bizarro Ed China?)
As much as I sympathize with the boys, this could not have happened in a more entertaining way and I’m a little sad it’s going to be coming to an end. Can this become a regular feature? It’s like a poverty spec Grand Tour but everyone involved is funnier and/or stupider and I mean that in the most affectionate way.The fact that these dispatches are being reported through Mercedes is just making it better.
I still think we need to do a shitbox rally to Los Angeles one of these days. Everybody starts from their corner of the continent, picks a $1000 car, and aims for David’s place. (Or Galpin.) Update posts along the way, of course.
Basically a good idea. Only thing is the $1,000 ceiling for the shitbox. Those people within a days drive of David’s place have an advantage over those on the east coast. So. $1,000 ceiling for those within 500 miles. Then add $1 for every mile further away. Fair?
Anything poorly made or maintained can be a shitbox.
Since we’re telling hotel/motel nightmare stories, here’s mine. Back in 2006 I was a first year teacher working at a high school, and our robotics team had qualified for the FIRST Robotics national competition in Auburn, AL. We spent all day riding a charter bus from the Chicago area, and when we arrived after dark at the cheapest available area motel (district policy … I’m so glad I don’t work at that shithole district anymore), the other teacher and I were definitely sketched out by the … uhhhh … questionable activities we saw in the parking lot and in and out of several first floor rooms. We get checked in, and the clerk gives us our meal coupons for everybody to eat breakfast at the Waffle House next door. You know a place isn’t great when you’re relieved to eat in the comparably sanitary confines of a Waffle House.
We get our 30 students settled in their various rooms. We gave them strict instructions not to leave the fucking room until morning (it was the kind of place where the rooms opened up to the outside, no indoor hallway), and then turned in and crossed our damn fingers. No sooner do we go to bed, than some random woman walks into our room. Murph went downstairs and ripped the clerk a new asshole. What if that had been some drug dealer or hooker walking into our room full of female students?
Oh yeah, our rooms were on the side of the building that had a honky tonk bar with a gravel parking lot, which stayed open until 4:00am. So we slept great, you can count on that. We stumbled out of bed, got dressed, and then Murph went to open the door, but it wouldn’t open more than a crack. He told me to go look outside. Some of our kids had tied a bunch of string between our doorknob and the railing. Jackasses. I yanked it open and went to eat my free waffle. I was too tired to give a damn. It was pretty obvious at breakfast which giggling chuckleheads had tied us into the room, but we decided not to give them the satisfaction of saying a single word about it.
Waffled and coffeed, Murph and I went back to our rooms. We looked around at the honkey tonk that kept us awake, then noticed a Chevy Lumina parked below our second floor room. It clearly had not moved in some time. The rear window was smashed out, and in the dust on the trunk lid somebody had written “NIGER”. While I do appreciate when a hate monger reveals their stupidity through their inability to spell, it was pretty clear that we needed to make like a tree and get the fuck out of here. Murph just shook his head and said, “I’m going to have to fight the district for a better place to stay next time, because we are fucking lucky nothing happened here.”
I participated in the FIRST robotics competition back in high school. We didn’t make it to the finals in Dallas at the time, so no skeezy motel experience for us.
By your description, I’m fairly certain there was more than one crack dealer posted up at your motel, probably making 4-figures a night in profit. These sorts of places are ubiquitous in the U.S.
The shock of this trip has caused me to enter an alternate timeline…
David, before starting out, has gone online and set up all of his utilities at his new apartment. He then calls “1-800-Got-Junk” and they remove everything, and I mean everything, except the Mustang, from his previous disaster zone. He then calls the Disaster Cleanup company and they thoroughly clean and disinfect his house. The landlord is shocked at how clean it is All this while cozily enjoying his suite at the Detroit Hilton, utilizing the in-room bar and abusing the room service menu.
He then has the Mustang loaded onto a covered transport and it is sent off to California. He has thrown all of his clothing out, it was toxic anyway, and books a first class flight to LA. He sips champaign the entire way, has a limo pick him up and transport him to his new apartment, where the Mustang already awaits him.
Ahh, I can rest easy now.
Totally impossible for David. The shock would likely kill him.
I can’t quit laughing at that twin-painting decor. I’ve stayed in quite a few sketchy road motels over the years, and have never witnessed that before. I’ve also run into that idiotic pricing scheme a few times – the only workaround I’ve find is usually to just go out in the parking lot, reserve the room through a travel website, and wait 15 to 20 minutes for it to go through. Speaking of those sketchy motels:
Best Experience: $35/night in Branson, MO a couple of years ago when we were passing through. Turned out to be a newly-purchased place the guy was trying to get off the ground and figured the best way to start was with under-cutting everyone else in the area by a huge margin. The place was in need of freshening up, but wasn’t bad at all.
Worst: Motel 6 off of I-55 near Joliet, IL. My wife and I had stopped there in the early 2000’s a couple of times – newly remodeled, cheap, all-around great place. Decided to stop again in 2010. We knew something was up when we realized our polished-turd ’94 Buick Park Ave. was the nicest thing in the parking lot. The check-in counter had been replaced with one of those drawer-pull/small bullet-proof window setups usually reserved for sketchy gas stations. We had arrived late, around 11:30pm and still had to wait in line to check in. Counted no fewer than three really obvious, and remarkable friendly prostitutes on our way to our room. A couple of cop cars showed up about a half hour later after we heard some lady screaming at her boyfriend. The room itself was infested with ants covering a mystery goo that was all over the little table in the room. Got maybe 5 hours of sleep on top of the covers and got the hell out of there bright and early. At least it was cheap!
The tires thing with old cars can really suck. I remember deciding to daily my ’71 Cadillac a while back, but then realizing the entire front end needed to be rebuilt after I completely burned up two brand new tires in just 1200 miles. I still need to get back to that project.
Glad the fearsome twosome (and Otto) are making progress – can’t wait until the ultimate arrival of the Beverly Hellbillies to their new digs. Good luck, California!
How would Otto know what a prison is like? What kind of school field trips do they take in North Carolina?
Public schools in wide swathes of the U.S. are very much like prisons.
The middle school and first high school I went to as a kid in the 1990s were highly regimented, the architecture style was brutalist(as is the case for most prisons), the students were served “food” by Aramark that was really unfit for human or animal consumption(Aramark supplies “food” to US prisons), there were armed police roaming about sometimes with drug dogs, and even the boys’ bathrooms had all of their stall doors removed under the guise of preventing drug use(that is, when the toilets had stalls over them as all, as some were completely out in the open). In turn, and unsurprisingly, the students often behaved like prisoners, and race-based cliques/bullying/fighting was rampant. Some of the school buses I rode on even lived former lives as prison buses, still retaining the window bars and the remains of peeled decals on the exterior showing the name of the prison it used to serve.
If I ever have kids, I’m putting them in a private school so they don’t have to deal with all that crap.
My worst hotel experience was in Granite City, IN. My cousin and I were taking a weekend blitz from MD to see the St. Louis arch. We’d been on the road all day in my ‘68 Dart. The heat didn’t work and it was November. We were cold, tired, and around 7pm, blew a shock on the Dart. We found a replacement at Pepboys, fixed it in the parking lot, abd got back on the road. By midnight we needed to stop and sleep but it was too cold to sleep in the car. We wound up finding a hotel down by a rail yard in Granite City, paid our $45 for a room (in 2012 dollars), and went to our room. Shoulda slept in the car.
There were bloodstains on the bed. The heat didn’t work, so it was approximately 35 in the room. Conversely, the shower was scalding. I decided to shower, put on all the clothes I packed, and sleep on top of the comforter. My cousin did the same. I think we maybe got 3 hours of sleep before we decided to just get up and cross the river to St Louis.
The Arch was lovely. We ate breakfast and headed home. 19 hours later we made it to MD, where I came home to discover the heat stopped working in my house. In a 48 period, we’d traveled 1600 miles, slept 3 hours, and in the time, not once had we ever been warm.
You’d think that discourage me from doing long, limited-stop trips in old vehicles, but no. This was just the first of many to come. I guess I’ll never learn.
Great update, Mercedes! I will nominate a different motel for worst ever: The Executive Inn in Danville, VA. During ‘Snowmaggedon’ on the East Coast (what was that, a decade ago now?), my wife-at-the-time and I (and amazingly, after that experience, she’s still my wife) got stuck in an airport about “3 hours” from where we were heading because of a cancelled flight, with no prospect of things getting better, so we decided to drive. Turned into a 7-8 hour drive, much through a fresh foot of snow in a rental econobox with bad tires. So we decided to stop, and the Executive Inn was about the only thing in sight. Should have known it would be bad by the sign in the lobby that said you had to ask for a refund within 10 minutes. I think it was $40 or $50. Wife opened the door to the room, got a hint of the smell, and promptly refused to enter the room, saying she’d rather try not to freeze sleeping in the car. It was the type of place you didn’t want to touch anything. And as college students, we were used to cheap, sketchy lodging. That place was the worst, to the point sleeping in the car during a blizzard might be better (we got lucky and followed a plow truck to a better area where there were normal cheap motels to stay in, so we didn’t have to risk it). That place was the worst.
David’s been warped by the rain
Driven by the snow
He’s greasy and dirty, don’t you know
But Otto’s still… chillin’
And I was out on the road late late last night
I seen that red Mustang with one head light
No radio, Mustang, no radio
They’ve driven from Tucson to Tucumcari
Tehachapi to Tonapah
Driven every kind of path that’s ever been paved
Stayed at only motels that don’t get raves
And if you give David
weed, whites, and winemashed potatoes, spaghetti, and aspirinAnd you show Jason a road sign
They’ll be willin’… to be movin’ [to California].
Absolutely love that song. Well done.
All I pictured was Sally giving Otto last minute instructions
You’re the man of the family now, Don’t let your father or “uncle David ” talk you into doing anything stupid! And yet …. there he is crammed in the Golden Eagle for a photo op!
The worst motel I’ve ever stayed at was also in Amarillo, TX. This was 20+ years ago, but it was called Knights Inn or something. It was $29 a night and was so disgusting that we slept on top of the sheets with all our clothes on because of the horrorshow of stains that lurked below. Everything was bolted down to the plywood tables. We didn’t even consider using the shower.
A quick Google search shows that this motel is now “Permanently Closed”. Some great reviews that are pretty spot on with my experience. Amazing it managed to last for so long: https://goo.gl/maps/yAXeU7G5zkPc8ULS9
Mine was the Knights Inn in Gallup, NM. I think that whole stretch of I-40 / Route 66 is littered with these shitholes, but at the time I was just young enough and broke enough to consider it an adventure. My experience was very like what Mercedes describes (although the cloned wall art is a goddamned stroke of dystopian hilarity that beautifully trumps my own thin-mattressed smoke-stained noisy-roaches experience).
Also, it was a mere $17 a night just over 20 years ago, so I guess I got my money’s worth since I lived to tell the tale. I think the all-night freight trains 50 yards away tended to keep the price point low for all the neighboring competition on that end of town.
Knights Inn is a chain that hit its peak somewhere around 1980 and seem to cater mostly to truckers and criminals. I can confirm that they are (were) indeed terrible. By the late 90s those near me that were still around were frequently in news reports featuring awesome things like prostitution and murder. I believe they are now operated by Super 8 or some other high quality hotel chain, although the illicit activity continues.
They’re still some of them peppered around the upper great plains. I stayed in one about a decade back and while this one was comfortable enough at the time, it did have the feel of a hotel that was on its third owner since anyone actually bothered to do any real upkeep to the place. I’d hate to see it now.
My personal worst was also a time I cheaped out and reserved the lowest cost room I could find. It was a Travelodge that seemed to have recently absorbed a crappier neighboring hotel. The main office was in a different building that looked modern and architecturally different to the building I was in. In fact our building and room were across a side street from the office. The pictures of where David, Jason, and Otto stayed, while slightly worse immediately reminded me of this place. It also had the feel of a place one might get shanked in the parking lot if you looked at someone the wrong way.
I stayed in one in Virginia a few months ago, because it was literally the only lodging available within about a 30-40 minute radius of where I had to be. Didn’t bother Binging any info about it until after I checked out, and there were quite a few local news articles that popped up RE meth lab busts and the like, the place gave off that vibe, it was nice to confirm it was correct
Knights Inn was a favorite in my home town for attempted high school parties.
It occurs to me that the “ worst motel in America”, featured here, reminds me very much of David’s shitboxes. Like project cactus and so many others, it’s been patched together to vaguely resemble what it once was, and is being used long past the date that it should have been condemned as hazardous to human health. Just sayin’
Nermind, I drive truck for a livin.
See y’all at the next rest stop. If I’m lucky and y’all are the antipode to luck. Which you seem to be.
Hell, I’ll be the dude standing too close behind you at the vending machine, or the man in the next toilet stall who you only know by his boots.
Happy travels.