Ohio to Missouri

Friday morning we put our things together, helped snake the sewer line one last time and loaded the bikes on the back of the Prius (with the car top carrier mounted up top, three bikes stacked on therack on back, the load of clothes and other assundry items we are bringing back (traversing America with) to the motor home and the four of us in the car - our gas mileage has gone from the avg of 48- 50 mpg to 33 - 36 mpg (I was very surprised by how dramatic the difference was.) As a very pleasurable offset we did though buy gas in Dayton for $3.59 on this very day just before we hit the highway for the 6 plus hour journey to St. Charles, Missouri. (This is the home of Megan's brother David and his wife Sherrie who currently share a home and live with her brother Lee and his son Eric.) When we left CT on Tuesday the lowest we saw gas drop to was $3.99 so it has dropped more significatly here in the mid west. You know where all the oil comes up from the ground and all the delivery ports are.
We pulled into the historic city of St. Charles directly off the highway and we met up with them (Dave and Sherrie) at about 7:30 last night and immediately Dave and I went shopping to get goods for a meal to prepare at home. When all was said and done we finished eating and talking after 10 and quickly shoved off to try to find our hotel back at the Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, St. Louis Missouri. Now, I don't want to mislead you or for you to even think for a minute that that designation for that airport in the afore mentioned, St. Louis, will help you at all if you are ever trying to find this airport via GPS in St. Louis, because you will not find it in St, Louis. Thus, the sucky part of the evening had just begun.
We plugged the address of the Ramada hotel that was listed on the national website that we booked thru and on the email confirmation that they had sent to us into the GPS. However the number (4545) of the building was not showing up on the street (North Lindbergh Blvd.) they gave us in St. Louis. Unbeknowst to me the GPS had automatically shifted to the highest number available (2799) North Lindbergh Blvd. when I had put in address number 4545. So off we went thinking we were heading to the address we had plugged in. After following the GPS directions to the automatically programmed 2799 address and finding no Ramada Inn there, I began looking at the GPS a bit more closely and was quite surprised when I actually saw the address it had directed us to. Searching its data bank for answers, I noticed that there was a 4545 South Lindbergh Blvd. so I set that in thinking that the road they gave us was a mistake. This turned out to be my big mistake. I followed this road back about 15 miles to the address I had just plugged in on South Lindbergh only to not find a Ramada there either. Feeling very frustrated at this hour of the night, after a long day of driving and visiting, this time I pulled into a parking lot (not my normal immediate pull over to the side of the road thing) and Megan, who was staffing the internet connection found the Ramada national reservation phone numberand I called them for assisatnce with finding the damn hotel and they offered only the local hotel number as there way of helping. (I just can't tell you enough how invaluable the Verizon PC plug in internet card has been while on this trip. It has provided almost immediate internet access all over the country with the exception of only two rather remote places I can think of) I called the front desk and got an, oh so, put on, pleasant person who was obviously at or over the end of her shift. (mind you it is fast approaching 11:15 PM and that we had just crossed into central time zone earlier in the day so this is really our 12:15 eastern for us and more importantly for the kids who are tired as hell from the six plus hour drive earlier in the day, then the visit, then the escapade to find the friggin hotel) The nice woman at the front desk puts me on hold for 7 minutes while she is looking for the shuttle driver to take the call from me to try to figure out where I am and how the hell to get me back to the right address and the hotel. I should have begun to get that, what the hell is going on feeling and listened to it before I ever went to the hotel, but being that I booked it so late in the day (as we were running out of gas, for the very first time ever in the Prius, which just shouldn't happen but as I said our gas mileage was severely impaired using the car as a moving van, on the bridge crossing over the Missouri River... but thats another story) it was not a cancelable reservation anyway. He politely tells me that if you are doing the directions by GPS you need to enter Bridgeton, MO as the town and not St. Louis. This sucks as the only city listed anywhere we could find for the "Ramada - St. Louis Airport" was friggin ST. LOUIS. Right, why didn't I think of that. The St. Louis airport is in Bridgeton. Coming from CT where the Windsor locks location of Bradley Field is call Hartford/Springfield I really should have known.
Well changing the town/city in the GPS made all difference in the world, however, we were still some 15 miles by 1/2 hour in the wrong direction from the hotel. We arrived at the front desk for the rest of the evenings festivities at 11:45.
They checked me in and took my money and gave me room keys for 238. Meanwhile Megan and the kids were getting the hotel cart loaded with all of our necessary gear for the overnight, ready to transport to our luxurious suite for the evening. Proudly walking next to my family with the loaded cart, heading towards the elevator we walk from the Air Conditioned lobby area into Dantes inferno. It had to be 95 in the hall as we waited for the elevator to the second floor. The elevator arrived, the doors opened and we got in to the super heated cubical from hell and headed to the 2nd floor. AS we got out of the elevator and began the long hall walk from 200 to 238 we came into view of our neighbors for the night. There were at least 12 older teen aged young men scattered throughout the hall way each with their own portable electronic device of some sort. Each leaning on a wall, spread out on the floor or pacing around the hall. Megan, without even breaking her stare at them said, "Well this is not looking promising!" I stopped everybody in their tracks and turned the family motion back towards the elevator. We got to the first floor and I sped back to the front desk to get assigned a different room for the night. I explained to the new front desk person (because happy girl had been relieved) that the second floor looked like a college dorm room and that at this hour of the night I needed a quiet space for the kids and us to get to sleep. They, already knowing of the 2nd floor situation although having done nothing about it, reassigned us to room 130.
I told them that I wanted to go down and check out the room first at this point before we committed to keeping it for the night. The guy told me that there were no other rooms like what we had reserved available. This was not going to be an real issue for me if the room was not what we wanted, except that I did not want to try to find another hotel at 12 AM. I went down to the room trying to be as open as possible to liking the room so that we could just stay and sleep. I tried to get the key and door lock open four times before I walked the 1/4 mile back to the front desk yet again to tell them I could not get in. The dude told me that many of there locks were worn out from all the years of use so I should try lifting the habdle instead of pushing down. (ever get so yused to a problem that you just find ways to manage instead of dealing with it? I had the impression that when you paid for a hotle room you as the guest wern;t realy supposed to have to deal with this kind of stuff but I found out I was wrong about that at Ramada - St. Louis Airport in Bridgeton) I went back down and did as instructed and got the door opened. All of my personal openness was necessary. As I walked into the room with 7 year old grand daughter Michaela by my side, the first words out of her mouth were, "It smells in here!". She was right it did smell stale and a bunch like some deodorized cleaner but this could be overlooked or at minimum tolerated. The AC was blasting but it was barely past warm in the room. I naively thought that maybe they had just turned it on recently and that it would really get cool later into the night. WRONG!