Читать книгу Oregon, the Picturesque. A Book of Rambles in the Oregon Country and in the Wilds of Northern California онлайн

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As to the hotels encountered in our month’s jaunt through the wilds, we will deal with them in detail as we proceed with our story—but we may generalize by saying that the average was wonderfully good. In towns of a thousand or less we often found comfortable and well-appointed inns where we could get rooms with private bath, and in the medium-sized places the hotels were often truly metropolitan in size and furnishings. In the smaller places the rates for rooms were low and in the larger towns moderate in comparison with city charges. Nearly all the hotels, however, were operated on the so-called European plan—you pay separately for room and meals—and the “high cost of living” was usually strongly in evidence in the restaurants. Although the touring season was nearly past when we began our trip, many resorts being closed at Tahoe and elsewhere, we found the hotels surprisingly well patronized and in a few cases we secured accommodations with difficulty.

Not being familiar with the hotels, it was not always practical to wire for reservation—a practice worth while where one has the necessary information. Sometimes we could get a tip from the hotel people as to the best stopping-place in the next town, but this did not always prove reliable, as the inn-keepers sometimes let personal reasons influence them to recommend a second-rate hotel. Neither can the average hotel directory be depended upon; many of the towns in the section we covered are not even listed and improvement marches so rapidly in this country that any information a few months old may be out of date. We found fine hotels under construction in two or three towns and they are likely to spring up almost overnight anywhere in this country. So, if one is uncertain, perhaps as good a plan as any is to wait until the day’s destination is reached and then make inquiries. This is usually safe if you do not arrive too late in the day; we planned our runs, as a rule, to bring us in well before dark and in several cases we saw later arrivals turned away from our hotel. We reached one good-sized town, where there is only one first-class hotel, about four o’clock in the afternoon and the landlord told us he turned away no fewer than thirty would-be guests after our arrival.