Econo Lodge Conference Center

I ended up taking an Uber to the train station after failing to find a bus stop within a 4-5 minute walk. I asked a nearby Muslim mosque for directions, but they escorted me outside and just repeated, “this is not a restaurant.” At checkout, the morning attendant didn’t speak English well and said I could catch the bus outside, which didn’t help much. The parking lot was littered with trash, and the hotel didn’t feel within walking distance of anything. The grounds and staircases had empty heroin bags, and someone had written something like “welcome to hell on earth” on the stairwell wall leading to my room. My bedroom was spacious but dated. One bed’s sheets smelled like tunafish, so I switched to the other. The bathroom window had been painted brown, probably years ago, and glowed eerily from a light outside; the tub had gross, moldy caulk all around it. At check-in, even though I’d paid online for a two-bed room, the attendant asked whether I’d accept one bed. He kept calling staff to see if he could downgrade me, seeming more focused on that than on how long check-in took.

For $70, it was okay for a night’s sleep. The hotel felt a little shady inside, but the room was alright, with two beds. The TV didn’t work, and I noticed a tiny spider in the bathroom, but I just wanted to sleep and didn’t make a big deal of it. They had hot and cold water and clean towels. I paid cash and got a small discount.

The toilet shifted around and looked like it might fall over. Nothing else felt clean either: the yard and hallway weren’t maintained, and there was no trash can in the room. The bedding wasn’t changed daily, and it seemed the bedding from previous guests was left for new arrivals too, so you couldn’t know how many people had used it. The towels were too dirty to use. We went to Walmart and bought two sets of bedding and towels. The photos on the property’s front page don’t show what it’s really like.

The outside looked like the Bates Motel, including a strange blood stain on someone’s curtains. Getting along the tight hallway to our room felt like walking through a closet, and the carpet was filthy. We’d booked for four people but found only one towel. The room had no proper door lock, and there was no security to enter the hotel. The parking lot and area around it had a lot of unpleasant activity, and we heard a man screaming there late at night. The shower leaked where the head came off the wall and only sprayed in a jet. One bed’s sheets had a hair and a cigarette burn; the other had a manufacturer’s sticker. The comforters were stained.