Hampton Inn at the Milwaukee Airport

Tuesday night, I flew into Milwaukee (MKE) and after spending 2 hours waiting on the tarmac waiting for a gate (thanks, American Airlines) eventually made it through the airport, to my Toyota Corolla rental car, and on to my hotel for the night.

It was snowing.  It had snowed much of the day.  And it continued snowing through the night.  I managed to make it to my hotel (the Hampton Inn in Oak Creek, WI) without incident as my snowdriving skills kicked back in (6 years of living in MT will teach you something).  I pulled into the last parking spot, and dragged my luggage through 8" of snow to the check in desk.  It continued to snow throughout out the night.

The next morning I got out to my car and prepared to dig out in my dress shoes.  But when I got out there, the Hampton staff had already dug out my car, and those belonging to the other guests.  Not only that, they had wiped the snow off the car and scraped the ice off the windows.  They saw me walking over to my car, and met me over there so they could sweep and scrape the windows again.  The guy even offered to pull my car out of the spot for me so I didn't have to walk in the unshoveled snow next to the car.

I've stayed at a lot of hotels over the years, including some really pricey ones. Still, the customer service I've gotten from Hampton Inn is second to none.  I never expected this kind of service from a hotel, especially one where I don't pay for parking.  This unexpected effort on their part is the kind of thing that will keep my coming back.

It seems it's always the inexpensive hotels that provide the freebies and excellent service.  Over the summer I wrote about another great experience at a Hampton in Clemson, SC.

While $200 and $300 per night hotels will charge $20 or $30 for parking, plus $15 for a continental breakfast, a $50 package acceptance fee, and $9.95 per day for WiFi, the inexpensive Hampton includes all this in the room rate.  The rooms and toiletries may not be as fancy, and they may not offer room service, but the little things they do are outstanding.

Snopocalypse

Okay, so Thursday, we did get some real snow. Here are some images.

I took these pictures at about 11:00 AM. The snow fell throughout the day.
















And this is why you should exercise caution before you teach your GF how to make snowballs.




(She didn't actually throw it at me, but you should always be careful.

Snow in Seattle

We had some snow in Seattle Saturday night, and, of course, the media was in full snow panic. We got about 1.5" in my neighborhood, and the street level stuff was gone in the morning. Still, all we heard on the news was terror about the winter storm. To be fair, other parts of the state did get real snow, but it still did not merit the full on panic we heard about.

Regardless, I took these pictures from my deck.

Mt Rainier

A couple months ago, when my Mother was in town, we took a day trip down to Mt. Rainier. Her post about the park is here.


View Larger Map

To take the most popular route through the park you actually have to first pass the volcano and go to the entrance in the Southwest corner. It's about a 2-2.5 hour drive from Seattle.

The route through the park follows Paradise Road to Steven's Canyon Road. That eventually takes you to HWY 123 and then 410. The path out of the park took us up the east side of it and eventually through Auburn, WA.

You can probably get through the park in an hour if you don't stop, but why you want to do that?

Shortly inside the park we came to one of the first viewpoints -- Kautz Creek. As you can see, it was a beautiful day. This should be a perfect day for volcano viewing right? Well, here's the view of the mountain, 180 degrees from the picture above.

The top of the volcano is wrapped in clouds. So for much of the day, we had a great view of the base of it. Regardless, there were plenty of great views.

The park is filled with waterfalls. After all, all that snow on top of the mountain has to go someplace. A short distance later, we made it to Christine Falls.

This water fall was nicely framed by the road bridge.

Nature can be an impressively stubborn beast. Here a tree is growing out of a rock wall.

Mt Rainier has a wide assortment of glaciers that grow and contract over the years. In the nineteenth century, the Nisqually glacier extended all the way past the bridge in the center of this picture. It's a bit smaller now.

A few more miles down the road, and you reach Narada Falls.

There is a short, steep trail to the best vantage point. And from that vantage point, you can almost always see a rainbow down below.

Eventually, we reached the Jackson Visitor Center. I believe this is the highest point in the park you can reach by car.

The volcano continued to hide.

It's tough to get a sense of the scale of the volcano. If you click on this image, it will take you to a larger version. See the tiny dots on it? Those are people climbing it.

The meadows at the foot of the volcano are known for amazing summertime bursts of color and thousands of wild flowers. This year, they were still buried under feet of snow. It was an odd Spring apparently.

There were still a few wild flowers on the way our out of the park at the lower altitudes.

And this one, which I used as my example yesterday, features a bundle of flowers growing out of a drainage hole in the wall.

Mt Rainier is a beautiful park to visit. The volcano is amazing whether you see it from above or below.

Even when you can't see it.

I took a bunch more pictures, too. Some of them are available here. I'll add more in the coming months, too.

Snow in Seattle

It's clearly Shawna's fault.

Traffic skids to a halt
By Jennifer Sullivan
Seattle Times staff reporter
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Drivers inching their way through the Monday evening commute cursed the snow that returned to the Puget Sound region and shut down at least two highways while essentially turning others into parking lots for several hours.

Police couldn't keep up with cars careening across freeways, chain-reaction fender benders and motorists abandoning their vehicles on suburban roads. Jackknifed and stuck semi trucks blocked some highways, turning typical 20- to 30-minute commutes into several-hour affairs.

For the first time in at least a decade, Highway 9, a major thoroughfare in Snohomish County, was shut down much of the evening because it became "a complete sheet of ice," Trooper Keith Leary said. Highway 522 also was closed off and on throughout the night north of Woodinville.