Mystery Music and Kangaroos in my Hotel

We spent the weekend in West Virginia. Friday night, we reserved a hotel room about 30 minutes from where my Stepdad grew up. Mandy and Ea stayed there, too. Now, I'm not making fun of West Virginians at all and I'm not picking on the hotel chain, but I'd just like to highlight a few strange points for you.

The hotel itself was very nice. We walked in our non-smoking room which, from the odor, was a smoking room about 36 hours before we got there. We opened a window as soon as we got there and left it open the entire time.

This would be a good time to mention the view from our room. Ahhh... the mountains were beautiful and in the morning, the fog rolled down the hills and right across the 84 Lumber sign and parking lot. Seriously! A big ol' 84 Lumber sign right in front of the hotel for every room to stare at. Hellooo!


Then there was the whirlpool, swimming pool and fitness center. The whirlpool was completely empty, the swimming pool was not much bigger than the whirlpool and the fitness center had about 4 pieces of equipment. Not exactly the huge expanse of amenities they advertised.

Steven and Matthew were so wound up. They were excited to be staying in a hotel- Can you tell we don't travel much- and having their cousins right down the hall was thrilling. It took forever to calm them down and get them in bed. Steven kept getting in and out of bed for one reason or another. Steven decided to put the door alarm from his Happy Meal on our hotel room doorknob before he went to bed, "... in case any bad guys try to get in our room." After that, he was hypnotized by the opening ceremonies at the Olympics and stayed in the bed.

Ahem.

Well, about 6 AM the mystery music appeared. We still have no idea where it came from, but if you were near either wall, you could hear it plain as day. As soon as you walked away from the walls, it all but disappeared. At first, we thought it was our alarm clock which we hadn't set.

Soon after that, the kangaroos on the top floor started bouncing all over the place. That's the only explanation for the amount of thumping and pitter-pattering going on above us. At that point, Mike decided to start taking some things out to the truck. He opened the door and I heard Steven's alarm go off! Mike dashed in to the bathroom to try and quiet it while he figured out how to shut it off. I got a good laugh out of that.

Everyone was soon in our room and we all went downstairs for breakfast. That was actually the nicest complimentary breakfast I've ever paid for (wink). There was anything and everything you could want- sausage, biscuits and gravy, fruit, danish and doughnuts, cereal, waffles, eggs, the list went on and on. It was a nice way to start the day. The kids even got to swim a little bit before we checked out and went on with our day.

I will say that the location of the hotel was very good. There was a large plaza with a gas station, K-Mart, CVS, hair salon (which Jesse tried out right away), movie rental place and more. Oh! Let's not forget the 84 Lumber!