We were at This HORRIBLE Place which you should right now tell all of your friends to tell all of their friends to avoid like the plague should you be planning a trip to Jackson Hole Wyoming. As I was writing my post about Yellowstone being exhausting, da Creature was in the whirlpool tub relaxing, when the motor just stopped running suddenly. He was whining and I went in to see if I could get it to start, and I pushed the button some, then I fiddled with the timer. Nothing. Oh well, I said, it's broken. He whined more, and played a little while longer. I noticed that there was a motor blowing very hot air from under the tiny sink and asked da Sister if that had been doing that all the time. She said it had, and that the whirlpool motor was loud and making strange sounds when it WAS working.
I figured I'd tell them when we checked out, and ate my room service supper which was marginal at best, and took an hour and three phone calls to get. and da Creature wandered around in a spa robe for a little while when all of a sudden,
out of nowhere,
.....the whirlpool tub leapt to life make loud grinding whining noises. I called the desk in a panic while I had da Sister panic dress da Creature and get him outside because I KNEW something very bad was happening. No one came... and still no one came.... we had time to completely get all of our things out of the room and be waiting outside while we tried to comfort da Creature who was hysterical. I could smell the burning wires from outside the cabin.
Finally, a good three minutes later, a guy in a golf cart finally shows up and tells me, "it just needs water". NO, I told him what had happened and INSISTED that he needed to find a way to shut it off NOW, and so he flipped circuit breakers which accomplished nothing (of course) and as the burning smell became unmistakeable, he called someone in a bit of a panic of his own, and finally found a way to get it turned off.
They decided to placate me by telling me they'd upgrade me, but that they were at capacity and it would take fifteen minutes. I had HEARD him on the phone with them saying "we have plenty of rooms, let's just move them." So, after sitting on the sidewalk for a half an hour with a hysterical child, we were moved to an "upgraded" room.
I wanted to get a shower so I could feel a little better after the ordeal, only to discover the shower did not work. *sigh* I again decided to just inform them at checkout and cut our losses.
So, at 3:00 in the morning, I awoke to violent gastrointestinal symptoms. The only person in our group that had eaten anything different for two days was me. I had eaten the chicken from room service. So...it is MOST likely that the food poisoning was the chicken. Thanks, incompetent hotel, for making a miserable experience actually dangerous.
By seven, I had really needed a shower (think about it for a minute, if you've ever had food poisoning) and we needed to drive to Salt Lake City, so I digged deep within myself and forced myself into the drivers' seat to get us out of the mountains. It was about as awful a thing as you can imagine, but I got the job done. Once we made it to relatively flat ground again, I let da Sister drive for a while so I could recover some.
By the time we made it to Salt Lake, I was weak and tired, but feeling much more human. It was only then that I realized that I had put da Creature's Yellowstone Junior Ranger badge that he had worked so hard for the day before on an end table and we had forgotten it in the chaos. :( :( :(
Fortunately, though, the Park Service is kind enough to send a replacement for him, and it is in the mail as we speak. :) :) :)
Moral of this story is....not everything that looks nice and seems nice is...sometimes it's the frontal edifice of someone trying to fool you into thinking they are running a service-oriented high end establishment when they are really just jerks who can't run their hotel properly.
No one even apologized. That just says it all.
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