I see it's been over a year since I've written a blog for the Pines Motel. It took me nearly 30 minutes just to figure out how to get into it again to write! Everything changes so quickly in technology today, I have trouble keeping up.
The dynamics in our family have changed as well. My mom and one aunt are the last remaining relatives of our parents' generation. Now with Alzheimer's, my mom spends most of her days in a fog that swirls and clears, swirls and clears. Her memories are slowly dying as she fades.
We're in our 27th year as owners. My folks bought the motel in 1972 and ran it for 19 years. I was a teenager here myself cleaning rooms for several years before I went off to college, determined to move on and leave Teton Valley behind me forever.
Now we don't really want to live anywhere else. But we do have a yearning to travel before we're too old to enjoy it. So we may take off for a month before summer, and again in the fall. It could become our new modus operandi, so be forewarned! I know many of you love to come year after year, and we managed to work around some of your schedules last fall when we took a month off for a much-needed rest. We appreciate your understanding and will try to sneak out between busy seasons since our next generation is not currently set up to take over the business.
2017 was a very intense year at the motel. Along with record-breaking business, waves of family came to stay and visit throughout the year. The solar eclipse in August had the phone ringing off the hook for months on end! The eclipse was amazing to watch, and to feel the temperature drop by 35 degrees was totally unexpected. John and I spent the month of September putting a stone-work facade on some of the west-facing motel rooms, and we're very pleased with the result. We may find a creative way to use the rest of the stone this spring.
We truly appreciate your business, and hope that the Pines Motel * Guest Haus will continue to meet your needs for many years to come. Thank you, and may God bless you and your families in 2018.
