That’s the Last Straw

You know, there are aspects of this trip that have served as minor annoyances:

• the hot-cold-hot-cold showers;
• the toilet that if you don’t hold the handle down for just the right amount of time (not too short, not too long) doesn’t flush correctly;
• the hair dryer that sounds like the jet engine of an airplane, but doesn’t put out much air;
• the dry air, which makes my hair stick straight, full of static and completely lacking in volume and has dried my poor face out horribly;
• and the wacky weather; it started out in the 80’s this week, with temperatures slowly falling and now snow accumulation being predicted for sometime between tonight and Saturday.

I could go on, but the last straw fell on the camel’s back last night. I woke up in the middle of the night to the intensifying smell of wood smoke. I checked out in the hallway and smelled nothing, so it wasn’t the hotel on fire. I checked out both sets of windows and couldn’t see any fire, so we weren’t in immediate danger, but the smell just kept getting stronger until it actually gave me heartburn and then a mild IBS flare-up. I finally woke Terry up (which I now regret, since he was managing to sleep through it) and he did the same investigation that I did, to no avail. He finally opened the balcony door and discovered that the smoke smell was emanating from somewhere outside. He turned the fan on the HVAC unit up to high, in the hopes that it wasn’t pulling the air from outside, but rather from the hallway of the hotel, which didn’t smell. We were up for quite some time, unable to sleep due to the intensity of the smell and I was concerned about what it was doing to our lungs to be breathing it in. Somehow, though, we were able to fall asleep and were greeted this morning by a slight, lingering smell that seemed to be eradicated from our nasal passages after a shower. Poor Terry is having some asthma trouble today as a result of the shenanigans. I still wish that I had called down to the front desk, not because I expected them to be able to do anything about the smell, but because I wanted to know if there were wildfires nearby or something. Terry and I will both do some questioning at work to see if anyone knows what it was, or even smelled it where they live.

Terry and I were laughing today that all signs point to Flagstaff telling us, “GET OUT!” 😆 Something that we are more than happy to do, honestly. It’s a nice town, with really friendly people and lots of restaurants (especially Mexican), but there’s just a feel to it that I can’t put my finger on. Something that makes me say that it might be nice to visit for a couple of days, but I definitely would not want to relocate here in a million years. Maybe it’s because I’m just a born and raised East Coast gal and nothing can change that longing in my heart for the feeling of home. I don’t know. But I’m ready to go to Phoenix and then wing my way home on Sunday morning, that’s for sure.