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.
Rachel Zimmerman was happy to be reunited with her missing panties.
On our way to work this morning, we noticed something on the sidewalk next to a car parked in front of the Hood River Hotel. On closer inspection, we discovered … OMG, it’s a pair of PANTIES!
Please tell us if your first thought wouldn’t have been, “How in the world did they get there?”
Being the civic-minded sorts that we are, we thought it might be nice to try finding their rightful owner. You know, a sort of latter-day Cinderella tale. The Prince takes the glass slipper (OK, panties) and tries to find the perfect fit. When he does, romance blossoms. Yada yada — not a likely scenario, right, given that we are talking about panties here.
A modern-day Cinderella, Rachel Zimmerman tries on the lost panties — and voila! They fit.
So we leave the panties where they lay. And a short time later, we’re sitting at our desk when, through the window, we notice two young women approach the car, notice the panties, and begin howling with laughter.We thought we’d share our own amusement with them. First thing one of them does is turn to us and say, “They’re MINE!”
More laughter ensues. Rachel Zimmerman lives in Kansas City, Mo. She and her sister, Erica Ashe of Brooklyn, N.Y., were on the third day of a 10-day trip through Oregon.
They had been hiking on the Eagle Creek Trail the day before and had a jumble of loose clothing in the car when they unloaded for the night at the Hood River Hotel.
When they began planning their trip, they knew only that they wanted mountains and hiking and gorgeous outdoor scenery. They looked at Switzerland. They selected Oregon.
“We love Hood River,” they said. “This is a great little town.”
It hadn’t been on their itinerary, until they crossed paths with a hiker on the Eagle Creek Trail, who suggested they try us out.
Rachel tried the panties on for fun — Yep, they fit — and off they went, in search of more paradise.
Travel is a series of stepping stones touched one after another after another. Strung together, they constitute a narrative, of how we got from there to here. Each narrative is a little different, no matter how familiar or cliched the venture.
At the Hood River Hotel, we love being part of your travel narrative. Yes, you stay with us, and yes, we try to make it the most pleasant experience possible. But it isn’t just about the hotel. It’s about your time away from the hotel. We’re just the hub on the wheel, sending you spinning out to the circumference. We want you to have a great time while visiting Hood River, and welcome the chance to suggest things to do. Just ask.
As one stop in your travel narratives, we love to dream of our own travels. And share the collected wisdom of our peers in the business. Follow us on Twitter, and you’ll see us passing along savvy advice from local colleagues at the Gorge Guide and Hood River County Chamber of Commerce.
We also realize that you travel beyond the Gorge, so we hope to help you there, as well, with nuggets of wisdom from more worldly sources. Such as? The Lonely Planet folks just keep pumping out useful guidance. We also love the new travel publication, AFAR — Where Travel Can Take You. Go spend some time at their sites, and feed the dream.
But you’re going to have to wait to learn his/her name.
In the meantime, we’re sharing — other great tales.
First, thanks to all of you who entered our sweepstakes by submitting a brief (40 words or less) recollection of the “best thing I ever ate.” We got some great recollections. And we have winners.
One official.
One unofficial.
Our unofficial favorite entry put us in a bit of a quandary because, unfortunately, it exceeded our 40-word length limit. Our judges felt obligated to select a winner from those entries that kept it at 40 or fewer words. We’ve notified the winner of a night’s stay for two at the Hood River Hotel, and a rafting trip on the White Salmon River with the great team up at Zoller’s Outdoor Odysseys. We’ll share that entry with you in a few days — but only after sharing a few others that we also liked. Building the suspense, right?
So, here’s the too-long — but quite nice — entry from Geronimo Tagatac:
The best meal I’ve had was an impromptu meal in the old spice port city of Malacca, on the coast of Malaysia. My girlfriend and I were at a loss as to where to have dinner. “Go to this place,” said Sam, the twentysomething owner of the Jalan Jalan Hostel. “Capital Satay,” he said, pointing at the Indian section of the city on a map. It turned out to be a wildly popular place with the locals and a few foreigners. We dipped thin meat slices and shrimp into the spicy peanut sauce in the pot on a gas burner in the center of the table and quenched the fire on our tongues with cold beer. Later, we walked past the brightly lit cathedral on the river in the warm, humid air and congratulated ourselves on our wonderful find.
