Salem: Bait And Switch?
So wanting to continue making progress on planning for the September road trip I thought I would look at our first stop which I had previously decided would be in Salem.
I had my eye on this one place that seemed to offer an impossible price of $35 per night. It was an extended stay place so I figure it’s a slow time of year or they’re suffering in the recession but I was more than willing to take advantage of that. So the room will have a kitchenette, big deal. Yea well I begin to look at this option in depth with the goal of booking it perhaps even today when problems began to crop up.
For one thing there were reports that the front desk shut down at either 10:30pm or 11pm and if you came after that you were just SOL, end of story. Now the driving time would have been approximately 6 hours and I hope to be on the road after dropping off the kid by 10am so assuming an hour long stop for lunch and another hour for border wait we’d ideally be checking in around 6pm, hopefully shortly before going to diner at Red Lobster or wherever, and being delayed by an additional 4 or more hours is incredibly unlikely I still wasn’t thrilled with the specter of potential disaster this raised. What if the border wait is insane? What if we hit heavy traffic? What if there’s an accident on the I-5 resulting in some painful reroute? What if we want to go shopping? Although for the price it might be worth risking it.
So digging deeper still I notice the actual property charges far more than expedia. They mention on Trip Advisor how they offer crazy discounts through their online partners that they cannot offer directly for whatever reason. Alright, I found a deal – yay me, right?
So I go to expedia with the intent of booking the room when I check the room options everything falls apart. For anything more than 1 double bed the price nearly doubles. They have rooms with 1 double, 2 doubles, or 2 queens. Wait a minute, a hotel with no rooms with single queens or kings? Really? That’s just nuts. Nuts, sucks to that option.
So a little looking and I discover a Travelodge offering rooms at $47 per night. Alright, I say to myself, you roll the dice with Travelodge but sometimes you win big so why not? I go to their website, get ready to book a room only to discover the $47 is for a disabled person. Now there’s nothing stopping me from booking it, it has a single queen non-smoking with WiFi and they don’t limit it to physically challenged guests but why discount that room? Wouldn’t that just encourage able-bodied cheapskates like myself to book it up so when someone comes along who actually needs it they’re SOL? Something about this just didn’t make me feel very good about myself.
Alright, it was time for a completely different approach. A new philosophy needed to be brought to the search. For one thing, why should I pay more for some dodgy room in Salem than I am for a perfectly located well-reviewed place within freaking walking distance of the Six Flags? Shouldn’t the midpoint stops be cheaper? Maybe my mistake was choosing small towns without much tourism. I checked Portland and discovered it to be more expensive so that wasn’t it; so much for economies of scale.
So back to the Motel 6 website I went. Thinking fondly of the location on Military Road south of Seattle Jon and I stayed at once. It was awkwardly located but dirt cheap and plenty fine as I recall.
Ever heard of a place called Tigard? Well neither have I but it seems to be between Portland and Salem and the price a very reasonable $45, located right off the I-5 and near a lake. Trip Advisor ranked it at 3.5 out of 5. The previous places I looked at ranked 2.5 and 3 respectively. And they have a pool. Save a boatload of money with a reliable brand by staying off the beaten path? Well now THAT sounds like me.
