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Gary Howe – A Place to Lay My Head


Sometimes one act of kindness in a moment of dire need can have a long and lasting impact.  This is a story about one of those acts.

Not long after starting my job at the Utah Hotel & Lodging Association I started a blog of sorts doing reviews of hotels around the state.  It was a way for me to highlight and bring attention to hotels that supported the association.  It also gave me a chance to get around the state and to visit a lot of hotels.  I would usually try to connect these reviews with meetings that I needed to attend in order to get more bang for my buck.

On one such occasion my plan did not work very well.  I had planned a meeting in Cedar City to help the hotels there organize a local lodging association.  It was a lunch meeting that would only last a few hours.  However, since it was a three hour drive each way I figured I would use it as a chance to visit a local property.

I had been talking with Patrice Arent who was doing the marketing for the Boulder Mountain Lodge and who had wanted a hotel review for the property.  Since I knew of no meeting in the Boulder area I figured that I could swing by that way and stay a night on my way to Cedar City.  It was a few hours out of the way but at least it would be a good drive and a stay at a nice property.  We emailed back and forth and set the date for the visit.  I would stay one night the day before my meetings.

I set off for the five hour drive to Boulder from work at about noon.  I figured that I would get there just before dinner, I could look around, enjoy the evening and then hit the road first thing the next morning on the way to the meeting in Cedar.

The drive was fantastic.  It is literally one of the prettiest drives in the world and I really enjoyed it.  I arrived at the Boulder Mountain Lodge at about 4:30 – 5:00 and tried to check in.  This is when things got strange.  Patrice was out on a hike and the gal at the desk did not have a reservation for me.  The small lodge was full but not with me.

While the front desk gal called Patrice to return from her hike I checked my email to make sure that I was there on the right day.  I looked at the last email where I had confirmed the date and sure enough it was the right day.  Then I looked back through some of the other emails.  It turned out that every time that I wrote Patrice I had used one date and every time that she wrote me she used the next day.  We had gone back and forth five or six times without either of us noticing that we were on different dates.

Ultimately Patrice came back and apologized for the mix up, called the other property in town and found that they too were full.  I decided to take the tour of the property since I was there after which I would hit the road again and find a place to stay at Bryce Canyon.  So we did a tour or the property, then we took a drive to the Burr Trail to check it out, we hiked a small slot canyon and then headed back for dinner.  We had dinner at about 8:30 at the Hell’s Backbone Grill, which by the way is very good.  By 9:45 I was ready to hit the road and I said goodbye.

I took highway 12 south and drove through one of the most scenic pieces of road in the world.  It really is worth the drive.  The problem is that I started just as the sun began to set.  I stopped once or twice to look off the cliffs on either side of the road and to try to see the vast canyons below me.  Eventually it was too dark to see anything so I hit the road and tried to make some progress through the winding Escalante roads.

By about 11:30 after many hours of driving that day was starting to get drowsy on the dark roads.  I pulled off in Tropic to have quick snooze before moving on.  I pulled into the cemetery where there was a little spot for me to park.  I rolled the window down, stuck my feet out and laid back for a little nap.  Sleeping in cemeteries in small towns is different than sleeping in cemeteries in larger cities, they are far more peaceful.

After an hour or two of a little nap I made my way down the road to Bryce Canyon.  I went to the Bryce View Lodge which had just opened.  It was full.  They were booked solid.  They called the other properties and found that they too were booked solid.  I decided that at this point sleeping in my car was as good as it was going to get.  So I pulled my car into a back lot where there was not a lot of light and tried to sleep.  It was pretty awful; I wished that I had not left the cemetery.  I tossed and turned for three or four hours just trying to get some much needed rest.  At about 6:00 AM as the sun began to come up I decided that I might as well make my way to Cedar City.  So I hit the road for the hour and a half drive towards civilization.  It was another fantastic drive with amazing views and I really enjoyed parts of it, but I was pretty tired.  

As I came into cell phone reception I called the Cedar City Crystall Inn where our meetings would be later in the day.  I explained to Gary Howe, the general manager at the hotel, that I had not quite found a place to sleep.  He immediately and generously offered to put me up in a room for a few hours so that I could at least have a shower and perhaps a little bit of sleep.

Gary did not make a big deal of it, he simply had keys waiting for me at the front desk when I arrived and I was able to get a quick nap and a shower and I was able to attend my meeting.  He did not charge me for the room, he did not ask for any favor, he just gave it to me.  While for him it was no big deal, the room was empty and I would only take it for a few hours, for me it made an enormous difference.  I think a lot of important moments in our lives are like that.  One person does a small act for another person and it makes their day, their year, maybe their life. 

Since that morning Gary and I have had many opportunities to work together since that time and he has shown great courtesy to me on numerous occasions.  Although we know each other much better now than we did at that time no one act of his will stick in my memory as well that of the morning where I had not slept.  I will always be grateful to Gary for a place to lay my head and a shower.

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