Nostalgia Stop

After what felt like at least 300 miles of non-stop rain, I was glad to stop at a place that Marilyn and I frequented, sometimes with children, the Best Western Tree House Motor Inn in the City of Mount Shasta. There was still snow on the ground around the hotel, not to mention the mountain.

The children all remember this hotel as the hotel of the "Green Death." We took an extended car trip to the Olympic Peninsula in the summer of 1993. On the way back Marilyn caught a rather severe cold. By the time we drove down from Lake Oswego, where we stopped in to visit her Uncle and I learned a lesson that was going to stand me in good stead for the rest of my marriage, everyone had it but me.

Anyway, we stopped and immediately after I got everyone into the room, I hoofed it over to a drug store in the strip mall across the parking lot. I barely made it before they closed but they had Vick's NyQuil. I don't think that the children would have taken it if she hadn't but they did and I got a good enough night's sleep not to be the fifth victim.

One of our earlier trips was memorable because we ate at Marilyn's Diner on her birthday. I would like to say the food was memorable but the last time I looked the Diner was closed up for good, which tells me that other people thought the same way about the food.

Then there was the time we were there in the snow, without chains. We went as far up on the mountain as we could, which fortunately was at a wide place in the road. I was able to turn around and go down slowly facing the right way. I would have hated to have had to back down.

We also went to the City of Mt. Shasta on one of our Thanksgivings on the road. On that trip we rented a house. On our way to and from the house Marilyn spotted a dirt mound and a sign that said organic soil. We called the number and once we described our van and family, were told to take as much as we wanted or could. Marilyn dumped everything we had in those 32 gallon trash bags out and we made off with a lot of dirt. She grew tomatoes in it for years.

As with all but one of our trips to the hotel, I did not come prepared to use the pool. I stayed in my room, except for a walk out under the stars to a close diner for a light dinner.

Although I really enjoyed the room with its interior and exterior doors, Marilyn would never have stayed in it. She preferred second floor rooms. Some of this may have been for security but all she ever discussed was not liking the tread of feet over her head all night.

As far as that lesson: Fifteen years earlier her Uncle was asked by his wife to put in a new foyer floor. He said that he always does what his wife asks but he gets to decide something about it and that is when. This advice saved me quite a bit of work over the years.