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Mountain biking trip to Hood River Hotel first leads couple through marriage proposal

19 Dec
Mike Sabo and Kim Stanek have a special place in their hearts for the Hood River Hotel (and each other).

Mike Sabo and Kim Stanek have a special place in their hearts for the Hood River Hotel.

 

Kim Stanek thought she was headed to Hood River last August with boyfriend Mike Sabo for a long-delayed weekend of mountain biking. Sabo had something else in mind.

In the spring, Sabo had graduated from Oregon State University with a master’s in mechanical engineering, and the couple decided to celebrate on the multiple ups and downs scattered in the woods around Hood River.

“It’s probably the best mountain biking I’ve done so far,” Stanek says. “The trails up there are so much different. You’ve got this steep climbing, and then awesome downhill.”

But before they could make it out to the Hood, Sabo secured a job with the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, and Stanek dove headlong into the final months of her own master’s degree studies in public health.

Sabo finally found time to fly back for an Aug. 2 biking getaway.

Before they hit the trails, though, they checked in to the Hood River Hotel, found their room, started talking about dinner –  and got engaged.

They were sharing a bottle of wine, as Stanek recalls, planning their evening.

“I could tell he was getting nervous,” she says. “His initial plan was to wait for the perfect time. But we got into the room, we’re having some wine, and he went and got the ring. He got down on his knee, and had his little spiel. He said he knew the day he met me that we were going to get married.”

Although she quickly said “Yes,” she recalls feeling no similar sense of certainty when they met two years earlier. It was another six months before they even started dating.

By proposing earlier than he had originally planned, Sabo cast a special glow over the rest of their weekend.

“I’m not a big production type of person,” Stanek says. “It was nice that it was private.”

Once they had that little matter of a lifetime together settled, they finished their wine, went to Double Mountain Brewing for a couple of beers, then grabbed dinner at the nearby Celilo Restaurant (“Our celebration dinner”).

She is planning a move south to Albuquerque before year’s end. They’ll be married there in October 2013. But before they tie the knot, they’re planning a return trip to Hood River.

“We have plans of revisiting each year and staying in the same room to celebrate,” Stanek says. “The Hood River Hotel is a very special place to us now, and always will be. It was the perfect amount of fun and romance all mixed in one.”

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Travel cheapskate helps show you where to stretch your dollar

18 Dec

Not that we want you to travel anywhere but here, but we at the Hood River Hotel appreciate value. It’s what provide, after all, great full-service and historic rooms at prices below those of competing contemporary properties.

So, when you’re thinking of going somewhere else, where should you go to stretch a dollar? Tim Leffel has some ideas. He’s a cheapskate, and proud of it, so much so that he blogs about it at his Cheapest Destinations Blog. He has collected his research into a book, as well, which he discusses in this interview on the Gadling travel web site.

See how much we care about helping you maximize your travel dollars?

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Prithee, Tosspots, attend ye wondrous well anon carouse

5 Dec

Two blocks and centuries away, those whacky folks at Naked Winery are ramping up preparations for their annual Medieval Banquet wine dinner at 6 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 26.

This will be their fourth return to the times of yore, with munchies consumed only with the assist of hands (no implements). Costumes are encouraged. And, yes, wine will be available.

The Naked tasting room is one block west and one block north of the Hood River Hotel. Book at room (just $100, remember), and walk to and fro the festivities.

And, so you can speak well at the event,  you may want to bone up on medieval language. Forsooth.

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As many prices continue to rise, ours just stay where they were in 2010

4 Dec

We’ve got remarkably good news for you. Some prices are not rising like a rocket. Such as? Well, those for rooms at the Hood River Hotel.

But first, bear with us. A little context, if you will. The national consumer price index shows that the collective costs for a variety of purchases has increased 7 percent since January of 2010 — roughly the last three years. Real estate has been sluggish, but gas prices (up 9% in the last year) and health care (4% in the last year) have continued to rise.

During that period, ours have increased … not at all.

Remember 1993? Gas cost $1.10 a gallon. Remember July of 2008, when gas prices hit $4.11 a gallon? Well, they’re back down to $3.50 a gallon, but not likely ever to get back to 1993 rates.

But in the last three years, room prices at the Hood River Hotel have remained basically flat. That’s right, as your cereal box gets smaller (but the price stays the same), as your bar of Irish Spring gets smaller (but the price stays the same), as your newspaper gets smaller (but the price goes up), as your cars get smaller (but the prices get larger), our rooms are available at three-years-ago prices.

Now, through the month of January, any available room, on any night is just $100. That means you get an auto upgrade if you’re looking for something roomier than one of our lovely courtyard abodes, which typically go for $99.

And, on-street parking is easy to find.

An additional note, comparing the size of our … boxes, with the size and price of theirs. Though our prices have stayed the same — or, for the season, fallen back a bit — for the last three years, we have not reduced our room sizes one tiny bit.

Take THAT, Shredded Wheat.

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Costumed guests get free Reserve Room access at Maryhill Winery

24 Oct

From the content of this blog, you might think that we at the Hood River Hotel think about nothing but beer and wine.

Not true. Sometimes we think about wine and … beer.

And Halloween. Which reminds us, the folks at Maryhill Winery — a mere 40-minutes east of your room at the Hood River Hotel — are holding their own Hallow-wine event this weekend, Oct. 27-28. Show up wearing a costumer, and they’ll let you into the new reserve room for free (normally, admission is $20.

Decorated guests will have a chance to sip some rare juice, and buy from four case specials — the ’09 Dry Riesling, $75; the ’06 Reserve Barbera, $125; the ’10 Rose of Sangiovese, $90; or the ’08 Reserve Chardonnay, $120.  Wine club members pay $10 less per case.

Get your glad rags on.

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Long, dry fall aids Columbia Gorge grape crop, potential for stellar wines

23 Oct

Small and rural fire departments around the country have had a tough time recruiting volunteers able and willing to bite off 40 or more hours of training.

Maybe if they knew there was free wine tasting at the other end, they might enlist.

Member wineries of the Columbia Gorge Wine Growers Association have offered any of the firefighters who worked to combat a series of late-season fires in the Gorge the tribute of free wine tasting through Dec. 31.

Talia Hammond, marketing coordinator for the CGWA, says people who fought the Milepost 66 fire, the Highway 141 fire, or the Mt. Adams fire can find info and directions to Gorge wineries by visiting the association web site, or calling her at 866-413-9463.

Because of a long, dry fall, the Gorge not only experienced some fires, it also is expected to have one of the best grape crops in years.

Lonnie Wright, a Gorge wine pioneer and proprietor of The Pines 1852, says of the crop and harvest: “Couldn’t ask for a better year.”

Peter Cushman, son of veteran winemaker Rich Cushman (Viento),  said fruit looked great during harvest.

“This could be a banner year,” he says. “We did have frost a couple of days ago that shut down some vines in the valley, but luckily everything was ready to be picked anyways.”

Steven Thompson, vigneron at Atavus Vineyards in White Salmon, knows first hand the scare of fire. Twenty acres of the 300-acre property burned, coming within a mere 200 yards of the vineyard.

“Such a dry year is bad for fires, but really good for grapes,” he says, referring to his dry-farmed Pinot Noir and Gewurztraminer vines, which go into wines bearing the Analemma label. “We’re seeing really great flavors.”

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Thinking of going somewhere? Whet your appetite with these titles

26 Sep

As a destination within a destination, the Hood River Hotel and its team love travel. Yours. And ours. And others. So, reading a good travel yarn is the next best thing to packing our bags and heading out. One of our favorite travel sites is World Hum, which aggregates the best in travel writing from around the web. They recently produced this cool infographic, teasing their list of the 100 best travel books of all time. Yum-yum, World Hum.

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Book exchange racks lead us on marvelous mental travels

19 Sep

Just some of the books on the exchange rack at the end of the hallway on the second floor of the Hood River Hotel. See something you’d like to read? Reserve a room at 541-386-1900.

We love to read, and we love to travel so we can read even more. Nothing like blasting through a novel in an afternoon by the pool.

But when we’re done with the book, what next? Haul it with us all the way to Rangoon? Or toss it? Such a waste.

Book exchange is the answer. Some of our best reads have come quite by accident, when we run out of our own literary stock and find ourselves perusing a very motley and eclectic mix of stuff that other readers have donated, or simply left behind when they moved down the road.

Many hotels and B&Bs curate these orphan reads on “exchange racks.” Leave a book. Take a book. Simple rules.

The Travelodge hotel group in the United Kingdom recently compiled a Top 10 list of books “left behind.” Can you say “Shades of Gray.” Other familiar titles dot the list.

Use our comment link to tell us about marvelous books that you never knew you wanted or would even like, but found yourself reading with gusto after you picked them up from exchange shelves in your travels.

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Thanks to FSA, four Hood River Hotel employees get rare treat at Timbers game

18 Sep

Elvia Miramontes, Maria Avalos, Miguel Salamanca and (not pictured) Rogelio Hernandez enjoyed a recent Portland Timbers game, thanks to tickets shared with the Hood River Hotel by Food Services of America.

If you work in a business that has a need to buy things from suppliers — as we do at the Hood River Hotel — then occasionally those sellers of things to the hotel will “thank” us by giving us some nifty swag.

Such as?

Try tickets for four, to a suite, at JELD-WEN Field in Portland, home to the much-loved Portland Timbers of Major League Soccer. Thanks to our friends at Food Services of America.

Typically, when stuff like that lands in the lap of management (i.e. the folks who write the checks), management pockets the tickets and treats itself.

Not here. Knowing how hard our housekeepers work to keep guest rooms sparkling clean, general manager Cathy Butterfield thought it would be cool to share those four luxury box tickets with four members of … the Hood River Hotel team.

Not all of them loyal Timbers fans, it should be noted. But soccer fans, all, and elated to join the high life, if only for a day.

“I’ve gone to Timbers games a lot of times,” says Elvia Miramontes, a three-year veteran of our housekeeping crew. “But being up there was a lot better.”

She says it was nice to be able to move around in the suite, get food and drinks, all included with the tickets.

She counts herself a devoted member of the Timbers Army. So it was disappointing to admit that, on Aug. 26, her beloved Timbers lost 3-1 to the San Jose Earthquakes.

Her friend, Maria Avalos, still counts herself a fan of the Chivas team from Guadalajara, Mexico (not its sister team, the Mexican-owned Chivas club based in Southern California). And Rogelio Hernandez, along with the ladies on the outing to Portland after only eight months in Hood River, still counts himself a Los Angeles Galaxy fan.

“I like soccer,” he says, dodging the questions of whether he might shift loyalties to the Timbers. “The suites were good. The people were so fun.”

Sure, he has some history with the Galaxy. But now that he’s in Timbers territory, all he needs is time to heal the wounds of misplaced loyalty.

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Hood River Hotel’s savvy spotter helps reunite reader with lost library book

5 Sep

Pamela Nagashima sent a “thank you” card to Hood River Hotel desk clerk Dawn Sisson after Sisson helped reconnect her with a lost library book.

Dawn Sisson, one of the fine front desk clerks at the Hood River Hotel, was driving to work the other morning when she saw a library book lying in the road.

It had settled into a striped-off triangle where two lanes merge into a freeway on-ramp. She was moving too fast to stop and pick the book up.

Later, she happened to overhear one of our guests asking if anyone at the hotel had found a library book.

Pamela Nagashima and her husband, Hajime, had been down at Marina Park in Hood River, helping their visiting nephew with windsurfing lessons.

Loading up to return to the hotel, Nagashima set the book on top of her car, and forgot about it. Heading onto the freeway, the book — “The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea” by Charles Robert Jenkins — slid off the roof of their car.

“Dawn was checking me out that morning, and heard me asking about the book, and she froze,” Nagashima says. “She said, ‘I swear I saw a book back by the freeway.’”

Nagashima went back, and found it where Sisson had seen it. It was pretty dinged up. Bent cover. Holes where gravel had punctured pages. Tire tracks.

“It looked like IT had been in North Korea for 40 years,” Nagashima says.

When she got back to Portland, she took it to the Multnomah County Library, and told the same story, somewhat chagrined. They charged her $10, roughly half its original value.

Nagashima was grateful, for several reasons. She doesn’t like to lose books. And she was able to finish this one: She had 15 pages left to read when she lost it.

So she sent Sisson a “thank you” card.

“That was indeed my lost library book lying in the highway,” Nagashima wrote. “I am so grateful to you for spotting it and mentioning it to me Tuesday morning. A little the worse for wear, but I brushed out the gravel and ironed the pages with a clothes iron, and it looks OK.”

Nagashima has no clue if the library will return the damaged volume to circulation. But if you happen to check the title out from the Multnomah County Library and wonder what the heck happened to it, now you know.

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