Journey vs. Destination

The Hotel Murray in Livingston, Montana was charming, quaint even. It was an older building; the elevator that is operated only by the staff definitely constitutes character even though we stayed on the fourth floor and the view of the antique marble covered step wasn’t quite enough to make up for the hike.

The town is adorable. It is an artist colony: writer, painters, and sculptors whose inspiration comes from the surrounding mountains and nearby Yellowstone. The food and coffee were great too.

After dinner, we went to the Murray’s roof top patio to watch the sunset. It was ok, mostly a smoker’s haven though it was empty when we were there. Well, empty of smokers; we were clearly disturbing the pigeons. But it was nice. The sunset was ok… Not a great one, I forgot the sun needs to go through thick atmosphere to turn wild colors. As the sun crept behind the mountain, throwing our valley into shadow, it was still high in the sky. Even throwing its rays on the mountain, the light was a too clear to make it as awesomely pretty as I’d hope. Still failed to suck.

The room was spectacular; I had this thought that if I ever wrote a private eye novel, the detective would stay in this room (and his mental voice would sound like Cary Grant, at least he’d think it did).

Renovated from two small rooms, the suite was big. It was nice to have a separate area to sit in. Though, that TV had something wrong with the HGTV channel. Ah well, we could watch it in the bedroom.

The earplugs on the bed were a worry. Nay, a serious concern but I was still charmed. And they were attached to a card that explained that if we didn’t find train whistles romantic, we might want them. Um, ok… I was tired enough that the occasional train whistle wouldn’t matter.

That was a lie, of course. Oh, not about my exhaustion or the train whistles.

The (insert expletive of choice) hotel had a bar attached to it. With a live band. A loud live band.

The ear plugs were effective but a little too effective, I kept waking up with a start (I like quiet but silence is bad). And the earplugs were too big, my eardrums hurt. Sad. So I took them out around 1230, getting to listen to a fair rendition of Cheap Trick’s “I want you to want me” at a volume slightly higher than if I’d put it on in the kitchen to dance around and empty the dishwasher. (That is the main time I put music on pretty loud, it is much louder than I can sleep through, tired or not.)

Sometime before then, C and I realized we were too hot. Groggily, I tried to open the window, turning locks and pushing up to no avail. I went to the bathroom and came back to find C holding the latches and pushing up (oh, there were latches?), then switching the locks and trying again. I went to help, hampered in communication by our earplugs. It was a comedy of errors, only aided by the fact that neither one of us was dressed appropriately to be framed in a window overlooking the street. Eventually I used my phone as a flashlight to figure out that we kept locking one lock and unlocking the other (hot and groggy and tired, it was not a moment of intellectual greatness) and we got some much needed air.

Of course that made the band louder, the street sounds louder, and those not-very-romantic train whistles even more piercing.

The band quit at 1am. I waited for the bar closing, band load out racket to abate. Before it did, though, a brawl started in the street below. Despite the crashes and thunks and yelling, I stayed optimistic that it would quiet until I heard police sirens.

Then I put my earplugs in again.

I suppose I slept a few hours before waking up from a nightmare about the bugs from Star Trek crawling in my ear to cause unimaginable pain and control my brain to make me stay at the Hotel Murray for another night. The horror.