Southern Elk
Well-known member
I’m glad I live across the country now and meet y’all at the hunting destinations. You should have just slept in the truck.It's pretty reasonable to expect for us to end up at a shady hotel once per trip. I think the worst was on the return trip from an antelope hunt in Gillette back in 2018. We stayed in Gillette for the hunt. A winter storm was rolling in, so we decided to be satisfied with filling our buck tags, and to ditch the doe tags and head home early. We hit the road and decided to get as far away from the chances of getting caught in the storm as we could. We ended up close to Kansas City, and decided that as soon as we cleared town we'd get a room so that we wouldn't have any traffic to deal with the next morning.
I didn't know anything about Kansas City at the time. My buddy was driving, so I pulled up hotels.com, found a room just past what I assumed would be the major traffic areas, and booked it. We rolled up to a full parking lot out front, very dimly lit, unmaintained, and empty lot out back. We parked under the awning by the main entrance and went inside. The abundance of bullet proof glass should have been a dead giveaway. We got our keys and went to the room to unpack before moving the truck. We got to the room to find several freshly patched holes in the wall, all conveniently about the size of a bullet hole. There were some pretty questionable stains on the floor. All the while a multitude of sirens were going off all up and down the street. We went back to the truck and unpacked everything we owned. Rather than move to the back lot, we just left the truck parked in front of the front desk. If it got jacked, at least someone would be there to give us a heads up. We slept with pistols on the night stand and rifles out of their cases. Sleep happened on top of the covers and I am not even sure we used the shower. We made it through the night and got as far away from there as we could, as fast as we could do it.
We had a similar quality stay in Wichata Falls, TX in 2022, minus the bullet holes and chances of being murdered in our sleep. The room was maybe a little worse. I was scared to even use the bathroom. The shower was dirty and wouldn't drain. The bathroom hadn't been cleaned in a while. Another night of sleeping on top of the covers. But, they did have coffee and a continental breakfast.
Edit: Looks like they've turned that place in Kansas City into a housing place for the homeless now. I guess they were there anyway, may as well let em in.
https://flatlandkc.org/news-issues/houseless-hotel-a-housing-first-solution-for-those-without-homes/