Good Night Sleep Tight...Don't Let the Bed Bugs Bite

When we traveled to Lancaster, PA for Lancaster's first ever Pride event we planned in advance. I know I would have to work on Friday and the trip from North Carolina up would take us through Washington, D.C. and Baltimore so I booked a hotel room in advance. We wanted to keep costs down in hopes of making a profit with our jewelry and t-shirts. I worked until 4pm, finished loading the Escape in 95+ degree heat in jeans and then we headed out. We got to the Super 8 at 11:45pm. I wasn't expecting the Ritz. Just a decent bed, working shower and overall cleanliness. As soon as we got to our room we set the bag on the counter, I dug out the shower stuff and went directly to the shower. I felt icky from sweating while loading the car and overall, having a long day. While I was showering, Tara pulled down the comforter and sheet on the bed, sat down on the bed with her foot on the bed and turned on the TV. She also had on all the lights.
When I got out of the shower, she went to stand up and a bug crawled off her foot and across the bed. She immediately grabbed a tissue and squished it. It was full of blood...her blood by the bite mark on the top of her foot. It was a bed bug!!!! Major ick moment. I immediately got dressed again, took the offending, dead critter in the tissue and marched to the front desk. The young man offered another room at the opposite end of the motel. From watching all those news articles on bed bugs in hotels I knew it was likely they only had them in one or two rooms, brought in by a guest so I agreed.
First the key card didn't work. I had to go back down and get another one. When we finally got into the room we immediately removed the head board to search for signs of bedbugs. The back of the head board was covered in black specks. Basically, dried, digesed blood from bed begs. Then I look down at the bed and the side of the box spring has a very large old bloodstain on it. It looks like someone bled profusely in the room in the past. I called down to the desk immediately. The young man sent his grandfather up. The grandfather's English was very, very poor. We showed him the problem, his response was, "The room okay!" over and over again. Finally, we got him out of the room, picked up the phone book, stood in the middle of the room and started calling. It was now 1 in the morning and we are trying to find another room. I went down to get a refund. They wanted to offer us another room! By the time I got a refund, Tara had another room booked at a privately owned place called the Country Inn. Very nice place, a little more money but totally worth it. The first thing we did was take of the head board and found nothing but clean, shiny wood. The room was clean, brightly lit, country decorated and just fine by me. Its unfortunate we paid $90 to sleep for 6 hours but the extra price was well worth it for the atmosphere and bed bug free zone.
The kicker to all this is, we know people in Lancaster County. Vision of Hope MCC is a sister church to our church, St. John's MCC. We just didn't want to bother any of them since they were so integral in organizing the event on Saturday. While we were at the Pride event, Pastor Debbie walks over to our booth and say with a smile, "Now you are staying at our place tonight, there is plenty of room (if you don't mind 5 dogs) and since you already offended us by not calling ahead and staying with us to begin with, you can make it up by staying tonight, coming to church tomorrow and heading home rested." Who am I to resist?
BTW, 5 dogs included 1 golden retriever, 1 black lab, 1 retriever/lab mix, 1 rotweiler/chow mix (all female) and 1 miniature poodle. Glory, the golden retriever was nice enough to wake me up early by sitting on me. I will never complain about our 18lb cat sitting on me again. 100+ lbs of dog is a whole different ball game. I couldn't move anything but my arms which was just fine by Glory. She did a great job of ignoring my entreaties to get off of me too. Any time I told her to move, she became very interested in the ceiling.
All in all it was an interesting and educational trip. Always check for bed bugs before settling down and if you have friends to stay with instead, that's always a better choice.