Be Prepared

OK.  Everyone who is anyone in my little, tiny, itsy, bitsy world has already heard most of this story, but too bad here it is again.

We took a quick trip down south last weekend.  Rick had to work until midnight on Friday and his conference started at 7:30 am on Saturday morning.  So, sometime in those 7 hours, we had to take a 3 1/2 hour drive to St. George.  We knew that if we snoozed at home and left at 3 am it would not be restful sleep, so Rick reserved a room on Hotels.com and headed South as soon as Rick got off work.   As we approached downtown St. George we could not see the hotel where we had a room reserved.  We quickly popped in the trustworthy GPS and typed in the address that was emailed to Rick.  What came up was a location 27 miles away (in the direction that we had just come from).  It was almost 4 am and we were both a bit irritated but we headed to the spot that the GPS was directing us to go.  It didn't make sense because Rick would have to get up in about 2 hours, go to his conference, leave me without a vehicle, and then come back and pick me up (sitting on the side of the road since he would arrive 3 hours after check-out).  But, we thought that we could at least get a shower and then drive back to conference center at 7:30 am since we had already paid for the room.  Well, when we arrived at the location the GPS sent us to, it was a little, windy dirt road.  No hotel.  We turned around and drove back to the conference center and slept in the parking lot.  In the Honda.  In the freezing cold.  

I later found out that the hotel we were looking for was just off the freeway near downtown St. George.  BUT, the name of the street had recently changed.  Hotels.com emailed us the OLD address and the GPS sent us to the correct location for that address, not the location of the new, current address of the hotel.   

But, what I want to learn from this is not only that you should not trust hotels.com, BUT that you should always be prepared to sleep in your vehicle.  I had felt prompted to bring some blankets on our trip.  I kept walking past my bed as I was packing thinking that my little, fuzzy blanket would be nice to have over the weekend.  But, my logical part of my brain kept talking me out of it because the forecast was for 80's and 90's in Las Vegas.  We always take our own pillows, but why in the world would I need my own blanket in  those temperatures?  

So, go put a warm blanket in the back of your vehicle and hope that you never have to unexpectedly spend the night sleeping in the car.