Remember how I said here that the Travelodge in San Rafael made me rethink the strategy of saving money when it came to hotel rooms?

Well, in this case, our choices were slimmed down because we had Riesling with us and I started searching late in the week for a place to stay. In hindsight (isn’t that always the way), I should have booked us for one night at The Village Motel (it was in a good location) and then one night somewhere on the east side of the park, because I could tolerate one bad night, but two in a row after a long day of hiking?

This motel is located right on the corner of two main roads that are used as major thruways for folks getting around the Adirondacks. And our queen room was on the very end, literally eight feet from the road. It sounded like semi-trucks and motorcycles were driving through our bedroom the entire night. We noticed that this might be a problem right away when we checked in around 6pm but the woman owner and her husband swore that the traffic died down after 8pm and they’ve had no complaints.

Give me a &^%$# break.

Our only option was to move to a room with one double bed but the next morning I was ready to sacrifice sleeping space for sanity so I went to the office just after 9am to ask for a different room. I was greeted with a message on the dry erase board that no one would be back until 3pm. Of course, by the time we returned from our long day of hiking the office was closed again and all the other rooms were taken. That’s what we get for staying at a crappy, family run motel, I guess.

Thankfully, Saturday night wasn’t nearly as noisy as Friday (we were also exhausted), but the amount of road noise was beyond ridiculous. I’ve stayed in hotels right next to the interstate that were quieter than this place. Our room also had two walls worth of floor to ceiling windows, so it was as bright as can be with all the outdoor lights this motel had burning all night. Another fun detail was the “absorbent” paper bathmat and a shower that was so small you couldn’t bend over to wash your legs without bumping your bum on the wall.

Obviously this place wasn’t expensive, but it wasn’t exactly cheap either. She forgot to charge us the $10 per night pet fee, but that was a small consolation to the horrible sleeping conditions. As we checked out the owner asked if the noise was a problem and I told her absolutely it was. But what could be resolved at that point? You know how you can look back on a bad experience and laugh? Well, I’m not sure that will ever happen in this case—avoid this place like the plague.