Your Dream Hometown

Hays was Hays as we drove into town. They had made some definite improvements since we last visited a few years ago—nice landscaping in the medians along the main drag, a new Home Depot, some better restaurants, etc.

We drove by our old rental house—it has been bought now and improved, though we were not particularly impressed overall. Maybe we’re just Johnson County snobs now. We showed the boys the bisons they keep in a field along the bypass and drove by the church—looks the same, with bigger bushes in front.

We checked into the Holiday Inn. I had never been inside the hotel, though I’d eaten at their restaurant. The boys couldn’t wait to get at the waterslide, which was indoors in a large central courtyard which housed the pool. We got to our room, got everyone in their swimming trunks and were about to slip on our fiip-flops, when the electricity in the entire hotel went out (it was sunny and beautiful outside). Mind you, we were in an interior room that faced the courtyard with no windows. I groped over to the table and grabbed Scott’s cell phone, and we found everything by its light. Within a minute, power was restored, but we soon discovered that the power outage had disrupted the water flow on the slide, and since it was within 30 minutes of closing the slide for the night, they decided to just shut it down. Bummer. Additionally, the water in the pool felt more like a skinnydip in mid-winter Fargo because they were having “temperature problems”. Double bummer. Zac tried it but couldn’t take it. We all ended up in the very roomy and nice hot tub for about 15 minutes.

Ah well, I guess hotels are, at their core, just places to stay for the night. Our hotel fulfilled its basic functions, and we were on the road bright and early just after 8 am.