Road Trip Series Part 2: Travel Predictions for 2021 and Hospitality Life

After a year of stillness and circling our apartments, there are a number of big travel predictions happening now that the COVID19 virus is slowing. 

My big travel prediction for 2021 is that road trips will be the biggest trend. Traveling internationally is still touch and go. There are many places that are still surging with this virus or hesitant to open their borders. But with Biden’s incredible vaccine rollout and Pfizer and Moderna being extremely effective, more people will at least get out and vagabond around America. 

There are major benefits to taking a road trip across America. With a road trip, you don’t need to get on a plane and inhale other people's air ( and burps, coughs, and flatulence). You can change your plans at a moment's notice and only have to be beholden to hotel reservations. Worst case scenario, you can sleep in your car! Plenty of people park at restops, lean their seats all the way back and wait until daybreak to keep traveling. Additionally, our highway system is amazing. It is fast and efficient, few potholes and connects us to all four corners of America. Depending on where you are traveling around, gas is relatively inexpensive ( avoids eyes from California). You can see so much more, stop at any roadside attraction, and our gas stations are designed to cater individuals going on long journeys within our own borders. 

After doing a road trip from New York to Arizona this March, I only have rave reviews.

In this episode of Strangers Abroad, I go into the glory of the American road trip and why it is going to be bigger than ever. I talk to two individuals who are involved in hospitality and what their big travel predictions for 2021 are. 

Transcript of Hostels, Hotels, Motels

and All the Right Places in Between

To the sound of rain against the window and a child screaming. Where am I? I arrived in Tulsa at 10:00 PM the night before, after a long day of driving through all of Missouri, we crashed at a Hilton in on the outskirts of Tulsa. That didn't seem to have been renovated since the seventies. Even the pictures of dogs and orchids, weren't higher quality than something off of a free stock photo site.

It was a little sad. We woke up to gray skies and an obnoxious kid torturing his parents in the room over not the oh, what a beautiful morning I was expecting in Oakland. It was a Sunday, which is a workout day for Sam and I, we wanted to keep to our routine as much as possible before sitting in a car for a full Workday.

We took the elevator down to the gym and found it packed with mask lists, heavy breathing humans. I could feel the cloth of my mask suck into my mouth. As I audibly gasped, an older man was in the center of the room. I'm the only elliptical can't get a lick of space around here. He says in rhythm to his machine, His big bleached white teeth shaped into a smile.

And I was horrified. I felt like I could see all of the germs and spit an air, exiting his mouth, spreading all over the room. The invisible germs would fall like dust particles in the sunlight. Since we found out that COVID is transmitted by air, my brain envisions all of the germs coming out of people's mouths.

It's a weird side effect. Sam and I spin in our heels and walk out of, there we go for a separate runs outside in the rain because I would rather catch a cold than COVID. When I finished my run and came back to the hotel through the lobby, I see the breakfast spread and a handful of list residents touching, breathing, and coughing all over the free bananas and sugar-free yogurt.

I skipped the breakfast. I guess COVID doesn't exist in Oklahoma is so fucking weird. We take hot showers and split. We leave the mini metropolis. We drive into the low, long, wide planes. The colors don't get more exciting than beige. I left Oklahoma thinking that if I'm bad in this life, I'll be born in the great Plains and my next.

I stare outside the passenger side window and see I'm moves us to the right side lane. We pass a red Robin and I noticed the woman trying to make a turn onto the road. She is stuffing French fries into her face as quickly as she can. Before turning left, her disposable mask is pushed down below her chin moving up and down, up and down with each aggressive chomp of greasy softened.

The masks. I am so tired of them. They cause acne on my chin that is so painful. I have to get this heavy duty prescription medicine for it to get taken care of. And in my worst moments, they make me feel claustrophobic and tight. And I can, I no longer care to make small talk because they just want to get the fuck out as quickly as possible and strip it off my face.

I hate them as a much. But I know that their approval active to prevent me or anyone I breathe on from getting sick. So tired crosses the state line into Texas. The sign says Texas drive friendly, the Texas way. As a teenager, passes us on a motorcycle with no helmet. Does it really? And speeds ahead. As we cross the Texas Panhead.

We saw the strangest car accident in the distance. 10 Cadillac cars were nosediving into the dirt in the middle of a cow patch. It's the same way that ducks stick their head underwater. As their tail feathers stick out into the air. The cars were neatly in align, spaced apart and facing the highway like a metal Stonehenge.

We had arrived at the iconic roadside attraction Cadillac ranch. Sam. And I pull over to the side of the road and head over. We have just enough time to stop and stretch before four more hours to Santa Fe or feet walking with them against the crunchy mud. As the cars become bigger interview the shadows rotate like a clock in the field, tracing time, like a modern sundial.

It all felt family familiar. Sorry, I don't want to make it sound like this wasn't planned because it totally was. This wasn't my first time at Cadillac ranch. The last time I stood on this plot of land, I was 13 and a horrible person. I need to preface that I was a terrible person because I was swimming in hormones that I didn't have a handle on.

And I was so set on ruining the trip to the grand canyon that my mother and her abnoxious cousins from Oklahoma had conspired to take me on AKA planned. I mostly rolled my eyes. I had these bangs that covered one eye because I thought that I looked cool. So I mostly hid behind my bangs on the drive from Oklahoma to Santa Fe.

We also pulled over on the side of the I 40 west highway, just like Sam and I were doing now. And the first time I was there, I noticed that there were cars with license plates from all over that lines, the road near the entrance, as we searched for a parking spot. But this time there were only a few local cars that took up space Cadillac, ranch was made in the city.

By group of hippie artists called ant farm. They drove down from San Francisco to make something that people could interact with and enjoy on their 24 hour drive to California. Maybe they were some statement against cars given that they were made during the heyday of the American road trip, but ever since they were installed and farm encouraged travelers to interact with their art and travelers have been vandalizing the cars to their heart's delight ever since.

When I was a teen, there were a lot of other people walking around, maybe like 20 most were speaking English and a variety of American accents. And I think there was one couple speaking. French, the stoic cars were surrounded by spray bottles of every color littered on the ground, like rainbow sprinkles on an ice cream cone.

I picked up on and tried to get as much distance between me and my relatives. So I meandered these cars were heavy with spray paint. The layers of aerosol dye began to weigh down and acute. Like multicolored Dulac bites over the chassies open bellies. The frames were covered in different neon Hughes.

That kind of looked like a Gobstopper candy. You could scratch a rim and see all of the colored layers at once I messed around and read messages, the other visitors had left couples sprayed their initials and the date next to forever or circled their initials and a heart just like they would on a tree.

And I remember thinking, I wish I had someone that I could do that. I picked up a bottle, maybe like blue or purple. And I think I sprayed my name. One of the rotating crushes, maybe Cassin or Ethan or Tyler on the side. Yeah, car, most likely all three. I like to weigh my options maybe by spring their names.

We would get together when I returned back to New York. And no matter how silly that side is, like, I still had that like such deep longing to be seen in life. Or maybe I can make eye contact with a local teenage stranger who's walking around right now. We would kiss behind the car seats and I would feel something incredible between us.

We would have to do long distance, but our connection was strong enough to make it work. I scanned around to see if there was anyone worthy of making out with, in between the crumbling cars. I just wanted someone to know, oh, is me

after looking around, I put down the break. I walked back over to my mom, but this time I turned my head and SIM was standing next to me. I put my spray can down and watched them inspect the cars, trying to decipher the thick spray, painted hieroglyphics of drunk people or foreigners that had been left behind.

I picked up another bottle, push the button and started spraying. Now I was here with someone who I actually do love. Someone that my 13 year old self was craving. I fulfilled my own prophecy. I returned with someone I loved completely and who loved me back. Sam and I kissed in front of the cars, took some selfies and then headed back to our car.

Our shadows stretched over the cow patch on the cold March seeped into our sweaters. We kept heading west. I caught myself in this. Retracing a world that I explored when I was younger and seeing it with older eyes, I noticed the signs of the Cadillacs aging, and I tried not to think about my own.

Kevin fuck ranch was made for the road tripper. It was set up during the heyday of cross-country trips and was an excuse to stretch your legs and experienced a little sparkle in between stops. It helped break up the trip and give travelers the feeling that the journey is just as fine as the destination.

Something that I love about the American road trip is that we've left things for each other to break up the day. When you're just sitting in a car for eight hours. I love how this one strange piece of public art was made with travelers in mind. Maybe that's why there's so much hype and lore around the great American bread trip.

There's so many little Easter eggs sprinkled across our country for us to find and interact with today. On the episode, we're hitting the. You'll talk to individuals who are doing their best to give the American Roadtrippers an extremely unique experience. So get your favorite car snacks and put on some sweatpants because we're in for a long ride.

I’m Adrien Behn, and this is Strangers Abroad.

Let's get something straight here. Road trips are not easy. In other places it's physically impossible to hop into the car and venture out into the Australian Outback or the dense jungles of Columbia. Road trips can't happen everywhere, which is why it's such a big deal here. Do the fifties and sixties, most Americans own a car and the highway system was complete.

The only good thing to come out of the Eisenhower administration vacationing abroad was too expensive back then. So Americans settled in our own expansive backyard and made the most of it. Our mountain vacations were spent in Colorado, Oregon. Not the Swiss Alps for a beach trip. Our options were between California, the Carolinas or Florida, not Brazil or Croatia.

There was no Yelp to find the best donut or boutique housing travelers would have to take a chance in nearly every decision. But I also wonder if the great American road trip is also what prompted our cookie cutter culture. After traveling from New Hampshire to Arizona, maybe all you want is something kind of familiar as it became easier to travel across our own nation.

Things started looking more. The thing, maybe the eighties made way for that. That's when Americans started traveling more internationally and the American road trip kind of turned into roadkill, maybe it made our experiences vulnerable to corporations and big brand names. The bespoke motel slowly transformed into copy-paste Hilton.

The mom and pop diner has got swapped out from McDonald's. The local charm gets packed up and replaced by a strip of big box stores on our first day of driving for this trip. Sam and I hit that. I 40 highway headed west, a straight line from New York to Indianapolis and I couldn't help, but notice all the sameness and the repetitive strip malls, all of God's heart.

State Walmart, Walgreens, Starbucks, Barnes, Nobles, chili, noble, Walmart, olive gardens, Starbucks staples, target Walgreens, Starbucks Barnes, noble olive garden. They give no local indication as to where we are. At one point down, I stopped for food at an Ohio strip mall just before getting to Indianapolis.

And you couldn't convince me that I wasn't in colony New York. Honestly, that 13 hour drive felt like it was one long ride to the Crossgates mall where my mom would take my sisters and I shopping. Do the American road trip have anything to do with that? Helping the traveler from Washington have some semblance of comfort while driving to flirt.

Maybe we started prioritizing sameness to make up for how big and diverse and easily out of control our country could have been. And then there's the capitalist argument, but I want to keep this light, although we were traveling during COVID, I wanted to avoid the cookie cutter hotels as much as possible for the longtime listeners.

You know, that couch surfing is my ideal form of housing. I love living with a local getting the day-to-day perspective in history and putting all of my. And sometimes life into one other person's hand, COVID cut that off. We've had to be literally separated from each other and it's suffocated any spontaneity that travel can bring, but I still wasn't deterred from having a very different experience.

So as I was researching places to stay, I focused for the local and boutique establishment. At each stopping point, I hunted for independently owned hotels, hostels and motels. I wasn't picky. Unfortunately, in some cities, there were no options other than Hilton, even bespoke places were surreptitiously owned by Marriott, which is why I was so excited to stay in Indy hostel in Indianapolis.

Indie hostel is located in broad ripple up and coming hotspot in Indianapolis. For locally owned bars, cafes and restaurants at the end, our 13 hour drive, Sam and I headed through a Midwestern rainstorm and arrived in this residential neighborhood at 11:00 PM. You were a little loopy from the long drive and laughing at Pete Holmes cause we needed a Midwestern comic to get us through the final hour.

But when we finally pulled in, it felt like we were working in someone's garage. The space at indie hostel is divided between two. One, the classic multi dorm hostel experience. And the other was a two bedroom apartment, which is where Sam and I snuck in. Once we arrived, it was so perfect to creep in late at night and not disturb anyone or be exposed to them.

Honestly, we were the real liability given that we had left Brooklyn and traveled over four states to get there after a peaceful, Midwestern, slumber, and a cup of coffee. I had a conversation with Joseph, the manager who is originally from here. We discussed what it's been like working at a hostel, a place intended for strangers to travel and meet other strangers.

We discussed what it was like working at a hostel during a time when we're disincentivized to be close to one another. And they do have a weird reputation in America than they do other places. To be totally honest. I was kind of surprised to find one for reasons that I don't fully understand yet in American culture, our ideas of what hostile life is.

Are skewed with stories about teenage travelers, getting refeed or kidnapped we're across the pond. And honestly, around the world, hustles are an incredibly popular option to meet other travelers live on the cheap. Joseph was attracted to working in a hostel because it was so unique in the states, Joseph and the owners of Indy hostel or rifampin, the hostel life experience for the modern traveler.

Cause we were driving through and it wasn't what I, this is technically called south Broadway. So ROAS is simply right here called and you know, it's just because broad report it's about two miles north of here is, uh, it's kind of the largest commercial area around here. And it's, you know, it's a nice little field.

There's a lot going on a lot of nightlife, some nice restaurants and shops and stuff. Take a nice walk down the canal, really nice spot. And then this area in the last few years, it's really been growing. It's still up and coming. It's really cool area. I think it's a little cooler than, than broad report, which is a little more sort of corporate now around terrorists.

So, you know, family and places, and it's got, you know, a bit of a cooler vibe to it. Um, because it's still kind of new. Tell me the history of this. So we've been here about, well, the owners opened this place up, I think 2003. So it's been about 18 years. Uh, there's been here. It's been through quite a few changes in that time.

So yeah, in the past we've done a lot of events here. We've done like folk festivals and stuff out in the backyard. We still do weddings. We still do concerts even through COVID. We managed to do a comedy night, every Thursdays outside. You know, the kind of social distanced and people could bring their own beers and south side bring them and blankets and stuff.

And that was a comedy night for about, I want to say about eight weeks every Thursday. So it was great. So that's, so it got people out when people were desperate to do things again. Yeah. On a booming day. How many people are in here? Um, it's been so long since a booming day. It's been that so a year. So, um, we normally have probably on a weekend.

So right now we have, um, 1, 2, 3, 4, we have 10 people here right now, which, you know, that's quite a lot for recent times. That's more than we wouldn't normally have in the last so seven months. Um, but before that, Traditionally, we'd probably have, you know, 15 people here on a, on a weekend and that's across the two houses.

Hopefully things will pick up, but we, uh, we have solo weddings for this year and we're excited with working with, with a lot of the couples that get married soon. So how does the. How do they set that up? Like do they rent out the whole space? Yeah. And do they get married back here? Oh my gosh. It's quite deceiving.

Actually. The space is quite a bit bigger than it looks at the, um, we can have weddings of about 120 guests out the, we do the ceremony and the reception. They rent the whole place out for two minutes so they can see it. Um, we provide tables and chairs and everything. So they just come in on Friday, set things up and then, you know, relax by the campfire or, you know, um, have their family friends over.

Right. And then, uh, yeah, the next day they'll have the wedding, the reception, and then up to 40 people can stay over from the wedding. That's amazing. One thing that I've really noticed about this trip is that we drove through. Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey. And then we didn't go back to New Jersey. Um, and then if the Annapolis I'm like researching places to stay, and there are all of these hotels that are like casually Marriott, they look like they're more boutique or they look cause that's what I go for is like, I want to have a conversation with somebody who has.

Being here for a very long time, if not raised here, I feel like he knows the ins and outs. And I always find that there's something very, like, there's something very empty about being in hotels or like the Hilton, all of that stuff. There's such a sameness to all of it. But what I love about hostels is like, there aren't these international chains and then they're like, this feels so much like a home home, which I have loved.

And like when we walked into the place that we're staying in. So nice. This is a feeling that like, I wouldn't get it up, you know, and whatever, like, so today we're going to Tulsa and like, our options are just Hilton or Marriott, you know? So like there's just something. So I feel like America is really missing that, you know, that like kind of personalized touch that Europe and like bits of the middle east and like Asia just seem to like have a.

Had Rojas, describe it as seen as a bit of a shift, um, on the way with that too. I sort of notice, especially with the rise of Airbnb people traveling, I think now, um, kind of seek that they want that home feel when they travel. They want somewhere new each time. Um, you know, it can be, can be kind of a drag if you travel a lot and you always go into the same sort of hotel.

And they're all normally pretty expensive, especially even more now because they're going to compete with Airbnb and, you know, places like this, and it's, you know, it's kind of draining and it's kind of soulless to go into those places and you have to get your own room and you pee, you speak the only people you speak to that speak to you on sort of a corporate level and a professional level, not a personal level without that personal touch.

You can feel quite lonely for traveling, especially on your own. I know you've done a lot of, um, loan traveling. And if you, if you are only stayed in hotels where you have to go to your own room, you know, you've got a TV in a bed and that's about it. Uh, you're missing out on a lot. And you know, like we just said to know that he said, you know, he stayed down there.

He's already met a friend just from staying in the same place as him. Right. Um, some people are put off by that. Some people don't like that. That's fine. But I think a lot of. Especially after this, uh, this virus we'll actually be wanting that more, but we desiring some interaction with people because we've missed out on that.

Oh my God. I feel like I just want to hug everybody that I see on the street. It's like, it's once it's like totally, totally over. No, I think you're totally right. And I think that that's just like another thing that was social media. It becomes weirdly hard to connect with people who are like right in front of you, but it becomes very easy to connect with people who are like very far away from you.

But I think that what COVID has really shown us is that living online is not enough us having a conversation like this. And I'm very grateful to be able to coordinate with a partner who I like love and we've gotten along famously, but it's. The living online life and just like checking up with people.

I don't do, like, this is not enough. And what I love about this space is that was the first thing that Sam said when we walked through was he was like, oh my God, I love that. There's the stage here. And like, I'm really loving this place is, uh, it seems like it's a space where like travelers can come and feel very safe and like connected, but also you're able to like connect the larger.

Community, you know, and like bring everybody from Indianapolis and like, have them hang out with someone who's like traveling from France or traveling from Nigeria or wherever. What are your predictions for what travel is going to be like after COVID? Yeah, I think so. Been kind of going to the extremes, you know, when they talk about it, they say, well, I've was going to go crazy that, you know, they're going to go around, licking everything they can, you know, I don't think that's going to happen.

I think that people, this experience will probably make people a little more wary of hygiene and we'll be a little more cautious of certain things. But on the other hand, I don't, I don't think there'll be going to the other extreme way. Right? I'm not going to travel for a few years till this all over. I think it's going to be somewhere in the middle of.

People are gonna take this experience and say, right, what do I value more now than I did before? And you'll find the value, um, things I took for granted more, you know, family and friends. Yeah. Um, but also just the ability to freely travel and freely try new places and small businesses to invest in small businesses because you know, it's been a big thing in the news, but also in communities it's been quite clear.

Places have struggled and they really need help from, from customers. And we need to give back to those smokers, small communities and small businesses, as opposed to just letting these big corporations kind of wash through and make the most of this bad situation. I know it's like, Jeff has, this has enough money.

Like I don't need to support him here. I am hoping that people are going to be like, I want to travel. It's going to be like trying to walk through the woods and high heels. It's like, I know how to do this, but this is the little bit more difficult to like get up.

I loved how intentional and homey this place felt. It was vibrant and welcoming and filled with. It definitely made me feel comforted after a long trip. I think it's so interesting how you can walk into a space and just feel who has cared for it without knowing the backstory. But we can tell whether or not the space has been cared for or neglected what its intentions were.

And if it's been put to good use, it's an insight on how the designer thinks about space and reflection of who's been there. Propping your legs up on a nice Ottoman is very different than putting them on milk box. How spaces are designed, influences how we feel in them. They also reflect where you are on this trip.

Sam and I went to Santa Fe, New Mexico, which is still heavily influenced by native American origin. Every building was made of thick Adobe material. And doors were outlined with strands of heavy braided chilies. That would feel so strange in some place like Iceland or Japan, design and architecture is a silent element that makes you feel like you're someplace specific.

What our spaces look like heavily influence our impressions, behaviors, and feelings. Even study suggests that every aspect of design from the layout to the materials influences our mood focus and stress falls. I'll include that in the show notes. And today aesthetics are everything. Coffee shops can no longer just be tables and chairs.

The espresso machine needs to be shiny and copper and industrial fiddlehead fig trees need to be in every corner and the lighting has to be heavenly. Places that look beautiful, get tagged, like and go viral. And if we want to help support local businesses, I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing for smaller places to spice up the place a bit.

If a locally run business can get a few more followers or on a travel bloggers must hit list. I'm all for it. I grape enough about Instagram on this podcast, but I do have a theory that it's changing some things for the better, or at least more beautiful. And I know what I'm about to say may sound extremely superficial, but we totally have social media to think being Instagrammable is the new priority.

It's not just coffee shops that are redesigning. Everything is especially the hospitality industry and motels are using this to their advantage. Motels also had their heyday back in the fifties with the great American road trip families could drive up into their own private. Jump in the community pool and visit a new state on a budget.

The mobile hotel would reflect the region's culture. Travelers would drive up to a neon, cactus in the distance and pull into their temporary state. In Arizona. We turned housing into part of the adventure, but too many stories of murder and detracting CD customers drove families away. And the horror stories up what was bad for motels was great for Hollywood.

But today with the revival of the American road trip comes a motel Renaissance. People are buying up rundown motels and turning them into next level. Glamping. I think enough time has passed where we're happy to pay for a nostalgic experience of life on the road. That's why I want to talk to the manager, Alex, at foot of the mountain motel in Boulder, Colorado foot of the mountain hotel is secluded in a densely wooded area.

But it's only a five minute drive from the lively Pearl street mall. The motel rooms are designed to look like little Lincoln log cabins, but with way better installation, there's a bright red neon sign in that classic 50 script that welcomed us into our cabin in the woods. It was all the benefits of camping, but with solid wifi and little did I know.

There's a whole world of motel ownership that is putting on a fresh new coat of paint and vamping up old spaces.

I think there's been this sort of like, you know, route 66 was a really great heyday for the motel. And then yeah, there was this period, maybe like eighties, nineties, where it was a, yeah, there is a stigma attached to motels as something. Yeah, you get the Bates motel, you know, psycho, you know, you get, they, I think it really had to do with a lot of ownership.

People that had, you know, really loved it and owned it and, you know, had created a cool experience in the fifties and sixties and maybe seventies, they were older, they were there places, deteriorating, maybe they weren't going to revamp it. And a lot of places were lost. So there's like thousands of motels along the west.

We're lost. And now it's like a hunt that people are on to find these boutique places and to revamp them and bring them back to life. And, and there's a total revolution happening with these small boutique. Motels, uh, that's happening. And that's actually what our, what the management company that I work with.

What we do is define these places and turn them into something like you experienced, which is past meets, present. And we want to have that old feel, but you've got great wifi and cable, TV, and HBO and all that kind of. A quick background on me. I went to school for adventure recreation in Ohio. That is a real degree.

That always landed me around hotels. So I saw this opportunity down in Boulder and went down a little over five years ago. And that's where I've been until. So out of those five years or for four years, until COVID to kind of. Get a lay of the land and yeah, totally different things changed a lot for us last year.

But I guess if I had, which I do now have some retrospective, you know, a little bit of hindsight, weren't hit as bad as a lot of places. And I think we're really fortunate. And so I'm really thankful for that because a lot of it lends itself again to the location. To the setup, motel motel literally means mobile.

You can drive your car to your door. So that is, that is part of why that's called that. And they usually meant that it was one floor establishment that all the rooms were on the first floor. There's a motor hotel. And so, um, With our setup, everyone parks at their door. You enter your own room. You're not going down a hallway and through a lobby and going up an elevator and all these different air.

So a recycled air. So that is a huge thing that people are looking for. And we even had some folks during the, like the shutdown who stayed with us because it was safer to stay with us than it was to stay in their apartment building. They were like definitely afraid of people were seeking us out. And I think we actually grew our marketing this year more than we ever have in the past, because we had to kind of reinvent who we were talking to.

And, and obviously you got a pivot for like all the different phases of the shutdown and the coming back where, you know, you're limited occupancy or the towns of limited occupancy for different, you know, businesses, retail and such. So I would like to say that we handle it about as well as you kids. Uh, we didn't make the money that we had hoped to make last year, obviously, but we were here.

We're going to keep going and you know, it didn't shut us down. So what were some moments of like reinvention or ingenuity that you had to. Work through from last year, probably our biggest pivot was groups and weddings. So we've never really done weddings in the past and I've got six planned for this summer.

So everyone also, I think that's another industry that may have a permanent change, but at least has it changed for probably the next three, four years where you're just not having that 300 person. You know, 75, 50 to 75 is now like the ideal wedding size and we're right in that spot or a back area. I don't know if you saw it much, but we're going to be able to host some events back there.

But I would say 75 is about our max. So where people weren't looking to us in the past for their weddings now they are. And I apologize if you're hearing dogs in the back. We're kind of activating that backlog and we're going to build some decks back there and have some new grilling space Hangouts basis.

So again, you're just looking at the real estate that you have. How can you best use it? And so, yeah, we're always looking at that and we've got a nice little lawn, so we're going to try to try to make the most of it this year. I've also got movies on the lawn that I've, um, we're going to be doing. So I got a big blow up screen and a projector, and we're going to do, um, sort of mid week to promote folks to travel.

Those are our lowest days. Obviously you came on a Saturday, always pass on a Saturday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. We need to fill those days. Get those last couple of rooms. And, uh, we're going to have movie nights on the lawn and I want to have like hotel themed movies for some of the nights. I don't know if I can show all of that.

Cause they seem to all be horror movies, but yeah, it'll be interesting to see how that goes. So how do you think that the hospitality industry is going to change? Because of COVID like, what are some things that you see? You're not going to be like going back. Keep doing what we're doing. We've been here 85, 86 years.

This property since 1934, longest running motel in Boulder, it's never closed down. It's always been family owned. There's something, there's some special sauce at this point. That you got to do something to break it. It's, it's a beautiful location and it's such a cool spot. I get people with that are like really, you know, into like crystal therapy and all this kind of, and they say this place has energy.

Unlike I've ever felt before I've never had any ghost stories or anything. It's not haunted. It's really a positive, the energy. There is so positive. You know, if I can just sort of keep that going and I can pass it onto the next ownership, then I did my job. I might've kind of already asked this, but like, what do you predict the future of travel to be like, this is going to be the best summer we've probably ever had.

Yeah. Are you already like booked up? Yeah, just based on sort of how we would see trends at this time of year for the summer we're out performing, you know, 20, 19, 20 18, 20 17. So, yeah, but I think, again, a lot of that has to go to we've rebranded a lot and we've, we've completely creating a space. That room didn't exist before.

And it was more if people found out that. So now it's like, you, can't not find us if you've searched hotel Boulder or the number one result for the mountain motel. And that's, that's huge. So. Um, I'm hoping that that continues and, and I think everyone is ready to. Everyone's making plans and they're ready.

They're ready to travel the summer. Everyone's really itching for it. This might actually be the biggest summer as almost like a, as like a after effect. I'm not sure, but we'll see. That's just hopeful thing. I think there's going to be a boom in travel and art. And I think that, like, I think we're going to explode a little.

People are going to be like, get me the fuck out of this apartment, you know? Well, and like, and like we're saying, everyone's having to readjust and, and a lot of people lost companies like right. A lot of companies were lost. I think for every company laws, probably three you're going to get started because so many people were like, I don't want to work in this industry anymore.

Look how susceptible it is to just like this situation that occurred. Maybe this could happen again. I don't want to be in that industry. I'm creating my own brand of like soap over here, check it out, Mimi's soap. And I make it in my garage. And, and like how many of those are going to start because of this?

So I think, yeah, like you're saying, I think there's going to be a huge revolution.

What I think is so just staying about indie hostel and foot of the mountain is that both spaces are expanding their community and cookie cutter hotels. Can't really do that. Hotels are great. If you want your own space and feel a little fancy. But I highly suggest that when you go out and start traveling again, that you spend your Biden bucks on locally owned housing, it's the next best thing to traveling with a local.

And I think that's why I love couch surfing so much because I get to peek into someone else's home. But to be honest, I think I'm getting a little old for couch surfing. I, you know, with age comes instead of sleeping and I need earbuds and a sleep mask and a white noise machine to get some solid REM cycles going.

And now I have a partner I would like to share a bed with and sleeping on someone's couch. Doesn't exactly give us the quality time we would like, so as I slowly pivot away from couch surfing, I'm still looking for ways to keep my adventures going without having to sleep on someone's floor. But I still want to.

After driving across America for four days, Sam and I finally arrived at a ranch house. Airbnb in Arizona, we drove through a native American reservation for most of it. The land opened opening up and letting us see for miles ahead of us. I feel like I could just see so much more of the earth. There were these massive yellow and lavender cliffs just jutting out from the lake.

It was the nothingness I had wanted so badly. We noticed all the trailers that we passed by. This is all we left the native Americans, arid land, minimal housing stretches of nothing. We gave them only the sun in the sky. And that isn't enough. The cell service dropped almost the entire way, and I felt my blood pressure rise.

As we drove deeper into the native American reservation and swirled through the trees. The day started to leave us in the haze between night and day, we could see a thunderstorm crashing in the distance. You never get that kind of heads up in real life. Once night took over, we got caught in a dust storm, strong enough that it felt like blueberry could be blown off course, even after weighing tons and having all of our stuff in it.

We held our breath as we passed through it, and we felt her car rock like an unsteady boat. As blue brew arched over a long hill in the distance, we saw a smattering of lights down below as if the stars had fallen onto the earth and kept their light a flame. Those are the only lights that we saw for hours.

There are no streetlights, only the occasional blinding light of a pickup truck blasting in the opposite direction, both ours and the miles started to reach closer to zero. 300 miles podcasts and music lost their Glo $200. Okay. We just wanted to get there. Eventually our GPS and gas holds out for the 400 mile drive miles to go until we finally turned into a dusty driveway and found ourself as the place that we had booked months ago, we pressed into the keypad and welcomed herself into the picture that we had been staring at for thousands of miles.

When we woke up the next morning and pulled open the curtains, we were welcomed with a mammoth red cliff in the distance cutting through the blazing blue sky above it. We made it and I was so in awe of its beauty.

Strangers abroad was written, produced, edited, voiced, thought of and created by me, Adrian Bain. If you liked the show, I would like you as so much to rate and review it. You can follow me on Instagram at strangers abroad podcast, or email me@strangersabroadpodcastatgmail.com until then keep traveling.