It's A Small, Small World

When RockCrawlinChef and I were looking for places to stay outside of Yellowstone, he suggested a B&B.  Heck, why not?  It would be kind of fun to see one other than Mom and Bill's, so he found Yellowstone Suites in Gardiner, MT.

I told Mom that we were going to be staying in a B&B in Gardiner and she said, "Really? I helped set up a B&B up there five years ago or so," then she proceeded to tell me that one of her guests had talked to her about wanting to open a B&B and that they'd emailed back and forth for a year or so before the other lady bought her place.  Mom couldn't remember her name, after all, it had been five years or more, so I sent her the link to Yellowstone Suite's website and had her look at it.

A day or so later, after looking at the website, Mom said, "no, that's not the one," so I kind of shrugged it off.

When we got to the B&B, our hosts Julie (human) and Dancer (canine) welcomed us and showed us to our room, The Moran Room.  On the way up to our room, we noticed chocolate chip cookies on the table in the common area, but didn't snag any.

The next morning, we joined the other guests for our continental breakfast and Julie was telling us about the time a Grizzly was in her front yard.  I asked her how she managed to keep them out of the garbage.  I mentioned that my parents, who own a B&B, electrify their dumpster with a car battery.  She asked which B&B and when I told her, she pretty much repeated Mom's story word-for-word about visiting the Lodge and asking a million questions.

After we made the connection, both RCC and I realized that there were many similarities we should have picked up on them right away:

1. The canine host (every home should have one)
2. Naming the rooms instead of numbering them; makes the place feel more homey and less sterile
3. Fresh chocolate chip cookies; Mom's are practically world famous
4. The guest journal inside the room
5. The guest information notebook inside the room; even some of the rules were similar (don't feed the dog, especially)
6. Sitting to eat breakfast with us, family-style

In retrospect, those are all classic Allenspark Lodge touches (especially the fresh cookies daily) that I should have picked up on, but didn't because Mom had said that it wasn't the place.  When we got home and I told her that it was the place she'd helped set up, she was rather surprised because she remembered a different building.  Maybe Julie remodeled it or worked on it and it no longer looked like the one Mom remembered, who knows?

What I do know is that I would stay there again (and not just because of the similarities).  The rooms were beautiful and clean and the beds were out-of-this-world comfortable.

~~~~~~~~~~
Adventures of Ashinator will be post-poned until Saturday, due to a special MISSION MONKEY post tomorrow.  We're starting our big donation drive to help out Monkey and her family and hope to raise $1,500 over the weekend.  Check back in on Friday for information about how to donate and get entered into the raffle.