The hotel heater smelled terrible
My wife and I were on our way home from my mother’s house and the drive took a lot longer than we expected.
It’s 200 miles between our homes and the trip usually takes about three and a half hours. We left the house late and we were delayed in afternoon traffic by 90 minutes. Both of us were feeling groggy and tired and it was hard to stay awake. When I suggested stopping at a hotel for the evening, my wife jumped on the idea and agreed that it was our safest solution. This was long before the age of the internet. We had to choose a hotel based on availability. There were three hotels on the interstate exit that we selected. One was $200 each night. There was no way that the two of us were going to stay in such an expensive hotel just so we could get a few hours of sleep. We’d stopped at another hotel next to that one and the room rates were much more reasonable at $65 each night. We decided to stay at this hotel. We had the room key from the guy at the counter and we took our phones, chargers, and our personal items into the hotel. We didn’t have any luggage, because we had not planned to spend the night anywhere during the trip. It was a cold night and we decided to turn on the heater in the room. I had to kick the heater to start the machine. Once the heater started working, an odor started to build up in the room. The horrible smell was clearly coming from the heater. I just wanted to get some sleep, so we turned off the heater and bundled up under the covers for a few hours.