We got to Houghton on Friday but didn't have time to drop our stuff of at the house before the hockey game. So instead we went out to dinner. After the game we drove to Calumet and only got lost once and stuck in an icy driveway. Thankfully my dad drives a cross over with AWD now and pulled our poor minivan up the hill. When we got to the house that we rented there were several cars in the driveway and people in the house. It was 10:30 at night and Eli was asleep in the car. Dave and I walked around trying to make sure we had the right place and finally approached the door.
The guy who came to the door seemed just as confused as us. We told him we booked the house and he said he did too, in July! They had 8 kids and 6 adults and after comparing our paperwork it was apparent the house was double booked! Had we dropped our stuff off before the game we would have been there first and I'm glad we weren't since they booked it first. We exchanged numbers and tried to get a hold of the owner, but finally decided to leave to attempt to find a hotel room. Winter Carnival in Houghton is a huge draw and finding two rooms on a Friday night would not be easy. Luckily the hotel in Calumet had two rooms for Friday night only and the next morning the owner of the house got a hold of us expressing his apologizes and put us up in his one bedroom cabin with an air mattress for that night until the large house was free on Sunday.
It all worked out, but it was a situation that we were just in a few short months ago. We booked three hotel rooms for an October weekend during the Colors season in Duluth for a Tech hockey game. One of the families had to cancel so David called the front desk of the hotel to cancel one room the week before our trip. We drove to Duluth and pulled into our hotel luckily at the same time as the other family and went to check in. Our rooms had been canceled, too and both Dave and Brian were arguing with the front desk. The hotel didn't want to take responsibility for their online system dropping our booking. I finally walked up and said I don't care who's fault it is I want to know what you are going to do to fix it. Quickly we had wrist bands for their water park and drink tokens and the promise that they would find us a room somewhere nearby.
They made good with their promise and found us two rooms across the street at the Day's Inn while we were at the Tech-UMD hockey game. The hotel even went above and beyond and comped the rooms for us- so completely free! Such a good outcome we decided to stay at there again on the Thursday night of our vacation to Houghton. They did not cancel our room this time.
We did get almost all of our money back from the vacation rental owner (he charged us a small fraction per night of the usual rate), but it made for a very stressful Friday night with not much sleep and it meant packing up and moving almost every-single-day of the trip which is exhausting.
The house and little cabin were on the shore of Lake Superior, which is frozen right now. So Adam and Eli got to go sledding on the icy hills while we all skied around and explored. It kind of felt like being on another planet when you were out there and I'm not sure you can capture it with a photo, but here goes.
And yes the house was worth it. For me there was probably a little too much for decoration, but I thought it looked nice.
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