road trip USA

hagerstown - base for exploring

Super 8 Motel, Hagerstown Halfway

This is my base for a day or two. Halfway is essentially a truckstop area, but Hagerstown is a well located town to see the area's historic sites. It's a little bigger than Wokingham, but more industrialised. As these are franchised (like many motel chains) standards can and do vary widely despite the best endeavours of the franchisor to achieve consistency. Tripadvisor.com carries a lot of reviews of motels, and can give a useful insight into the standard of a place. Of course, people tend to write only when they are energised to do so, but some attract more brickbats than others!
I chose this Super 8 unashamedly based on it's listing in the "Pride of Super 8" chain as one of it's premier motels. No reviews mentioning cockroaches here!

After checking in and finding that the room exceeds expectations, I took a trip to Walmart for some provisions. Mrs Tripper finds Tesco at the Meadows a bit on the large side. This Walmart opened my eyes (well, actually it strained my eyes). It's so big that I couldn't see the far corner on account of the fact that the curvature of the earth gets in the way. Curiously, the fresh food section is smaller than that of Tescos in Wokingham, probably because it attempts to sell everything else under the sun. Managed to buy a crooklok for the car ($19) and a coolbag ($15) to keep provisions cool in the car. Fascinated to find that they are measured not in pints, gallons, or litres, but in tins. This felt more Aussie than Yankie. And notable that they are stocked in the sporting goods area of the store, so quite clear which element of their customer base is being targeted! Was tempted by one that runs a mini refridgerator off the cigar lighter, but this only accommodated 10 tins, and we couldn't have squeezed in Mrs T's cava bottle. Chose the simpler but bigger 28 tinnie coolbag instead.

Supper that night: Mrs Tripper believes I am unreasonably obsessed with TruckStops, or Transport Cafs, in Britspeak. I believe this relates to the fact that in England, a cooked (ie fried) breakfast is such a treat, added to which Mrs T can't bear eggs. So I ventured down to the Hagerstown truckstop for supper, and ordered a cheese omelette with salad. (Got to get my vitamin C in...). At $8, I felt this was great value. 5 minutes later, a very motherly lady of extremely ample proportions delivered my 3 egg omelette, covered in cheese, along with 2 rounds of toast, complimentary fries (of the sliced potatoes and fried in a pan variety, not chips). "I thought you could do with these as well" she declared, as she beamed at me and presented yet another dish of what I can best describe as Duchess Potatoes. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera to record this smorgesbord fit for a sizeable family. I can only assume that having sized me up at 6'2" and 12 stone, she felt I needed filling out a little....!

Phyllis and Kendra, 2 of the very nice desk team at Super 8 Hagerstown. Looking through the eyes of a potential mugger, Can you spot the bumbag? (Precisely! Many thanks, Nynx & Co.)

Have to give a bit of a plug to the Super 8 at this point. Great big room, really spacious & smart bathroom. They've gone for that really practical one-piece moulded bath and shower surround, so that there's nothing to grout, no gaps/joins to leak, and all the corners are rounded and smooth, so really easy to keep clean. Also a folding baby changing table. Not a thing of beauty, but I think in hotels, I choose what is obviously clean, and can't hide any unwanted guests... There's also a fridge, microwave, TV with loads of channels (including the NBA playoffs) and ... fanfare off stage... the compulsory hairdryer. (Compulsory for Mrs Tripper rather than myself.) Plus a good laundry room, & smart breakfast area. The breakfast offering is cereal, muffins and bagels, toast and fruit, coffee. Always promptly topped up, and although I'd like to see orange juice, the bottom line is that it's free, and those who complain about the lack of cooked breakfast are missing the point about this business model.

Doors even have 2 peepholes - one for normal height people, and one at waist height, presumably so that the kids can check that it really is their parents returning from the bar. (That lower peephole would also come in useful for the vertically challenged Mrs Tripper.) Very nice staff: Phyllis the Manager greeted me by name at breakfast. I left a modest tip on the pillow to acknowledge how well maintained was the room, and on my return found a nice little handwritten thank you from Darlene.

The only disadvantage to being in a truckstop area (apart from the dubious view, although even that has a sort of boys-toys charm) is that a lot of these truckers sleep in their cabs (which have a sleeping compartment up back). The above pik is only one quadrant of the view. Think 100 trucks within visual range: and about half of them leave their engines running all night to power their aircon and lighting. Joe Trucker told me it's called the big-rig lullaby. Fortunately it's JUST far enough down the hill not to really bother me, but apparently in some locations they are right outside the window. This also points up something else - how is turning off our phone chargers at night going to save the planet when hundreds of thousands of 8 litre diesels are idling all night across America..?

So anyway, I liked this Super 8 enough to stay for 3 days...

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