Where Not To Stay In Panguitch, Utah

Over the varied course of my fifty-some years I have stayed in some interesting motel and hotel rooms.  I vividly recall, for one, a night I spent in the Metlen Hotel in Dillon, Montana.  What made my stay at the “Met” interesting was that a live country and western band was playing Waylon Jennings tunes underneath my bed as I tried to sleep.  From a strict scientific point of view, the band was one floor below me.  But that is not how it sounded to me.

I also remember a beautiful teakwood-furnished, marble-floored room located on a humid ocean beach in Vietnam that filled with fine white sand from the beach because my wife and I left the door open while walking the windy beach nearby.

Two nights ago, I finally slept in the room from hell.   I write this as a warning to anyone planning a trip to Panguitch, Utah where the room may be found.

I first noticed the brownish carpeting in the room, which appeared to have been the venue for either a series of rodeos or several Roman bacchanals in a previous decade.  Colleen immediately suggested we wear socks at all times as a way to maintain our Ebola-free status.

I was tempted to sleep in my shoes.

The television remote appeared to be vintage 1980.  Honestly, the remote had so few buttons, I was totally confused.  What do you do with “on” and “off” and four arrows?  Once I finally manage to find a decent station on the television, the feed for that station continued to blink on and off.

The shower, though it looked normal, was in fact a high powered pressure washer.  I will spare you details of the sounds I produced when I accidentally exposed some of my more tender parts to the direct spray.

I found the bed pillows most disturbing.  The pillows themselves were covered in plastic.  I mean plastic: honest-to-goodness-will-hold-a-dozen-watermelons-as-you-drag-them-around kind of plastic.  The pillows crinkled when you moved and the instant you tried to pull a pillow into place the cover shot off the pillow like a loaded rubber band.  Worse than that, the pillows stuck to me like blood-sucking leeches once the pillow cases were gone.  If I rolled over, the blood-sucking pillows rolled with me, loudly crinkling the whole time.  I woke late in the night amid a tangle of plastic pillows and free-ranging pillow cases.

In fairness, my sister and her husband overnighted in room #4 of the same establishment and encountered a reasonably pleasant experience.  Given the experiences of my sister and her husband, I will not mention the name of the motel and will, instead, recommend you refuse to stay in room #7 at any of the motels in Panguitch, Utah.

You’re welcome.

--Mitchell Hegman