We Survived The First Week!

It's official, we have survived a week as Motel owners!  It’s been interesting…  sleeping on air mattresses in the apartment, getting startled awake at 4am by a wary traveler looking for a room, multiple days of thunderstorms, and figuring out all the quirks of this 5-decade old gem.

The first couple of days were spent mostly getting situated in the apartment and getting our heads around how the place operates.

Moving into the apartment - Day 1

On Tuesday, we built the new shade arbor.  The camouflage shade screens are temporary until we can get some vines to grow on the cattle panel.  It was fun to see kids playing on the swings, and guests sitting in the new chairs under the shade!

Building the Shade Arbor

The rest of the week was spent demolishing some walls to open up the breezeway next to the apartments and making multiple runs to the county dump.  We even bribed the neighbors with a little Coors Light to help us move the bus forward.

Breezeway (under construction). Click for Video of Demo

We spent a lot of time deep cleaning.  The kids were a great help and they worked long hours!

The cleaning crew

It was fun meeting a bunch of the locals and folks that were visiting for the 4th of July.  We even got to meet the Staveley’s, the couple that owned the Desert Air from 1971-85 (we’ll do a separate blog for that one!).

The kids seem to be having a great time.  When they weren’t helping clean, they spent a lot of time playing chess.  They got comfortable enough with the town to walk the mile to the park on their own.  They even got to be part of the July 4th parade, riding on our neighbor’s float.

Neighbor's parade float

We were all exhausted by the end of the day, but that’s the perfect time to enjoy a cold drink and watch the sun go down.   

Relaxing outside under the Arbor