Desert Sands Motel

I paid for a week and left the next day, but they wouldn’t refund any of it. They just point to the rules and say you should’ve read them. A Google reviewer already described the place so accurately that I can only add a few things about this motel where you get what you pay for. There were big cockroaches, bed bugs in the bed, and dirty sheets and room. People knocked on my door offering drugs. Local girls also came knocking at all hours, and the reviewer claims management puts them up in rooms to attract customers. If you’re looking for STDs, apparently this is the place. My advice is to stay away, even if you’re desperate. You could end up with a huge hospital bill.

The rooms are a decent size, and the property seems less chaotic than it used to be. Still, I’d avoid staying here because the night manager, Archie, is loud, rude, irrational, and inappropriate. He monitors where guests go at night, accuses people who are out late of prostitution, then calls the police on them. I don’t have an issue with sex work, but I do have an issue with how Archie treats guests. He seems to find any excuse to throw someone out.

We came because the manager said he needed the business when we called around, but I can see why now. We asked for a double room and were first given one bed. I stopped sharing a bed with my mother over twenty years ago. In the room we did get, the outlets looked like they’d been damaged in some kind of electrical fire. There were lights only in the bathroom and closet, and I couldn’t find any smoke detectors. I’d go somewhere else.

I remember staying at Desert Sands in 1965, back when I was in the army at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. A few of us drove to Albuquerque on a whim in the middle of winter, and this motel was tops then. Bed bugs, though? Yikes. I’d rather pitch a tent than pay for a room infested with them.