The Hood River Hotel bought a bunch of pumpkins recently, and gave one to each of our staff so they could create their own jack o’ lanterns. Here are just three of what our talented crew came up with, greeting guests just outside the main entrance to the hotel. Some of us are calling the one on the right, Ralph. Hmm? Wonder why? Oh, the horror. Happy Halloween, everyone.

Ready, set, run … into the cloud of dust. Can this be … fun? Apparently so.

Our staff members love taking care of our guests — and people they don’t even know, in the latter case by taking part in the 2012 Color Run at Portland International Raceway.

The run — in which participants start out in white garb, and receive blasts of colorful chalk dust during their passage so they end up … colorful — raises funds for the benefit of the children in Latin American countries, through the group Child Aid.

Based in Oregon, Child Aid is the best-rated of five nonprofit organizations providing similar services. It earned a four-star rating from Charity Navigator. Of total expenses, 94.7% goes toward programs. And, it should be noted, participants in the Color Run pay for their own soap and water upon returning home.

Hood River Hotel servers Ashley Heck and Whitney Munoz are still smiling, after getting heavily dusted in the 2012 Portland Color Run.

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.

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.

More than anything else, that’s what you want in a hotel room. New research from Diversey shows that hotel guests rank clean linens, no visible signs of previous guests, and a pleasant smell (no nasty odors) ranked highest in sleeping quarters.

Bathrooms? Did you really need to ask? Clean toilets, clean area around the toilets, clean … clean … clean.

Read the survey results. Then tell us what you value most in a hotel room — cleanliness, low price, comfy beds, etc. — by using our comment utility.

Alejandro Marquez uses a ski mask to protect his eyes from onion fumes while prepping food in the kitchen at the Hood River Hotel.

But we — that is, the people who work here — would not drive spend two hours, and drive 147 miles, to eat here. None of us. It just doesn’t make sense. Who would even think of such a thing? Or actually do it?

Well, Mystie Haynie, for one. On May 29 of this year (2012), she woke up in Pendleton, Ore., famous for its wheat fields and rodeo and situated that precise distance away from Hood River.

Then  she went and picked up her Mom, and headed west toward a medical appointment in Portland — and breakfast in Hood River.

“I wanted to do something special for her and had planned it several days before we left,” she says.

“Not to turn this real sad, but Mom was diagnosed with cancer and we were on the way for her first consult in Portland. I felt that your restaurant was the perfect place to be that morning. Just her and I.”

Haynie,  a mental health nurse and mother of three who lives on the Umatilla Indian Reservation just east of Pendleton, says she and her husband have stayed at the Hood River Hotel twice.

“We enjoyed the atmosphere and friendly staff,” she says. “We stayed once for our anniversery and once before a rafting trip on the White Salmon. The desk clerk was so gracious about getting us a last-minute room at 9:30 p.m. May 12.”

Haynie says she’s “hooked on the Hood River area. I love the greenery, the artistic atmosphere and friendly people.”

She says she and her Mom had a great breakfast.

“Please thank your waitresses, cooks and everyone involved that made that possible,” Haynie says. “It was perfect. The coffee was hot, fresh and always full. The food was excellent! The ambience was exactly what we needed. No rush, no hurry. Time seemed to slow down.”

Time. We can’t make it last. But we do try to make it better. Glad you enjoyed your visit, Mystie. Here’s hoping we can host you and your Mom on her birthday, for many years to come.

The high-speed chase, that is. Most of us see them only on TV, so this was a big excitement in River City, to see real cop cars chasing through town after a real extreme suspect in hot elusive activity.

“It’s a familiar sound,” says Dawn, our front desk agent. “I used to live in Spokane, and they had high-speed chases all the time.”

First thing your blogger hears when he walks in the door this morning is Dawn and Clinton, our maintenance guy, rehashing the hash at the front desk. “I almost had a story for you,” Clinton calls out.

Come to find out he was in his rig, outside, eyeballing the guy who eats an apple on the sidewalk every morning, when he hears the sounds, looks in his rearview mirror, and here comes the elusive suspected object of high-speed pursuit.

Oh, man, if only he had been quick enough. Anyway, here they are, the Hood River Hotel’s team of crime fighters, telling it in their own words.

Tag along as Hood River Hotel servers Whitney Munoz, left, and Ashley Heck duke it out in the ultimate Mixed (Bloody) Mary Arts Smackdown. The winner? Bacon … and horseradish.

Drawing on her Italian heritage, Hood River resident Lucia Von Flotow has recently finished “Calabria,” a cookbook full of tasty treats.

And now, in partnership with the Hood River Hotel and Cornerstone Cuisine Chef Mark Whitehead, Lucia is bringing her recipes to our plates.

It’s all part of  New Year’s Eve (Saturday, Dec. 31) prix fixe menu offered only in a single seating.

It starts at 6 p.m. with a Fireside Fondue Dip and Sip in our lobby. Lucia will talk about her new book while guests dip into a classic cheese fondue and sip Prosecco.

Then, at 7 p.m., everyone grabs a seat in the Cornerstone Cuisine dining room, and tucks in to a five-course dinner, based on recipes from the book and prepared by Whitehead and his kitchen staff.

Cost is $50 per person (gratuity not included). A wine bar will be available at separate charge.

To reserve space, call the Hotel at 541-386-1900. Now, the menu …

Antipasti Appetizer

• Arancini (stuffed rice balls)
• Involtini di melanzane con patati (eggplant rolls stuff with potato)
• Bruschetta con sarde (sardine bruschetta)

Zuppa (Soup)

Zuppa di fagioli con cavoli patati e porro (Roma bean soup with kale, leeks and potatoes)

Fruita di Mare (Seafood)

Salmon con fica balsamico (roasted salmon with fig balsamic)

Carne (Meat)

• Maiale ripieno (stuffed pork loin)
• Arrostiti cavoletti di brutelles (roasted brussel sprouts)

Dolci (Dessert)

Crostata di Prugna (Italian plum tart)