Quality Inn Shepherdstown

After days of heavy rain on the C&O canal trail, we needed a dry place to sleep and booked at the last minute. Mario greeted us and was incredibly helpful, knowledgeable, and accommodating. He let us rinse the mud off our bikes outside, then showed us one of several indoor bike storage rooms. The room was clean and comfortable, a very welcome break from a wet tent. There's also a laundromat next door, which came in handy after a week of wearing the same bike clothes.

The breakfast was really good, and the room otherwise looked clean. But the toilet was so black underneath the rim that it looked like it hadn't been scrubbed there in a very long time. Now I'm questioning how clean the room really was.

We ended up finding another hotel, so I never actually stayed here, despite trying. My husband is disabled, and we were riding the C&O Trail when his e-bike stopped working. A couple of hours earlier, the Choice Hotels app had shown several rooms at the Quality Inn in Shepherdstown. We got caught up riding and I hadn't finished the booking before we lost internet on the trail. I was trying to work out where Uber could safely drop him while I rode there. With no service, the app suddenly showed no rooms, which I later realized may just have been because I was offline. I called the hotel directly. The clerk first said they had a king room available, which was fine, but when I asked about AAA pricing, it became “unavailable.” We had to find somewhere else quickly after Uber had already picked us up and we got internet back. Strangely, the app still showed several Quality Inn rooms available once we were online again. This left my disabled husband stranded on the trail longer while we searched for another place Uber could take us, even though it looks like rooms may have been available the whole time.

The rooms were clean, the staff friendly, and breakfast was included. After a long, rainy day riding bikes, we stopped here for the night. The ride from the bike trail is mostly uphill, though not especially difficult. They advertise a bike cleaning station, but none of the staff, including the manager on duty, knew how to turn its water on. We had to use the car wash next door so we wouldn't get the room completely filthy. Downtown can take a while to reach by Uber or Lyft, though there's a decent Chinese restaurant, a pizza place, and a Food Lion nearby.