Winter Road Trip Day 7: Verde Canyon Railroad

We booked two nights at the Super 8 in Cottonwood, Arizona so that we did not have to pack out of the room today. After I logged out of work, we drove the short distance up to Clarkdale for our scheduled ride on the Verde Canyon Railroad.

( To the Trains! )

Between Lisa and me, we took a whole lot more photos than what are in this entry. See the Verde Canyon Railroad Album I created on Flickr if you want to see the whole lot. It's a really nice trip, and I think it was money and time well spent. I wish we'd had more time to go through the museum and read all of the information signs, but we did buy a copy of the route guide that should have additional historical information to be absorbed at greater leisure.

It's only about 15 minutes drive back down to Cottonwood on Arizona 89A. (We drove up to the railroad on historic route US-89A and back on the more modern state route, for variety.) We'd intended to immediately head out to the Black Bear Diner for dinner, but it took me more than an hour to get the photos from both our cameras uploaded, and as you'll see, I didn't try to label or geotag them precisely, as it would have taken even longer. As it happens, it's a good thing we were in the hotel room for some extra time, as I'll explain in my next entry.

Cottonwood Interlude: Unwanted Indoor Shower

When we got back to the Super 8 after our ride on the railroad, Lisa handed me the memory card from her camera, and I spent more than an hour pulling stuff off of her and my cameras and uploading them. I also had mail both work and personal/fannish to process, but eventually I was about ready to go have dinner. About that time, Lisa noted that there was a dripping sound coming from the bathroom, and that was not good.

( Water from the Ceiling is Not a Good Thing )

After discovering that the room phone wasn't working, I ran (literally) down to the office to tell the manager. He came quickly with me, and then headed upstairs to the room immediately over us. A few minutes later, the leaking slowed, then stopped. Our first theory of an overflowing bathtub was wrong; the tenant there was just taking an ordinary shower. Apparently there was a leak in the drains that poured down from our ceiling.

The hotel manager (a very nice fellow, incidentally) had the person upstairs move rooms and brought a mop and started to clean up our room. He also brought us a complete new set of towels to replace those we'd used to try and mop up the mess. As we're moving out tomorrow and have thoroughly moved in to this room, he said we didn't have to move, which was handy. We went and had dinner while he cleaned up the room.

I was a little worried that he'd think we caused this, and had visions of the famous hotel flood at Disclave that led to the little "don't hang things from the water sprinklers" signs in many hotels. But the manager saw immediately that this had nothing to do with us, and was just bad luck. He thanked us for reporting the problem so quickly.

It was a good thing that we hadn't gone to dinner first, as the mess of water that would have flooded our bathroom would have been much worse.