We arrived at our hotel in NC pretty late last night. It began as if we would be doomed the rest of the evening. The kids were sleeping in the car, so Lonni went to check us in. There was a ton of noise in the hotel due to a family reunion they were having, so as soon as we walked in, all three kids woke up.
As we walked to what should have been our room, Lonni, carrying a very sleepy Wil, took out his key and slipped it in. To our horror, as he opened the door, we see a man jump out of bed and run towards us ready to pounce.
Thankfully he was dressed and we apologized and closed the door.
An aside, as a flight attendant I was taught early on, to ALWAYS, lock the hotel room door with every lock it has.
So, Lonni quickly went to the front desk, let them know how embarrassed and scarred we all were and secured us another room with no occupants.
By this time the kids were wide awake and now we had the wonderful job of 
not only bringing all our things in, but having to put the kids back to bed.
The redeeming quality of this hotel…it was a Hampton Inn. If you have ever had the pleasure of staying at one you know, the beds are AWESOME. So once we were settled, we got all tucked in for a nice rest after a very long driving day.
In the morning we got up early to head out to the NC Zoo. It was a very overcast day and we knew we would have to contend with the rain eventually, but we were not going to let that stop us and were as prepared as possible.
I knew the NC Zoo was supposed to take 4 to 6 hours to explore completely so I was prepared for a large zoo. However, I don’t think we were at all aware at how beautiful it would be.
This was no regular zoo, it was an animal reserve. Each of the animals had acres, not feet, of space for their enclosures. We were only able to explore Africa and I felt like I was in Africa except for the wooded trails between exhibits. It was larger than life. If I were an animal and had to live in a zoo, this would be it!
The kids loved the statues scattered throughout the park for their climbing fun.
I think we took a picture of them on just about every statue, elephants, a rhino, beetles – you name it!
They also loved the helicopter at the wildlife hanger setup on the edge of the preserve, and being a quiet morning in the zoo, the kids were able to spend extra time in the helicopter exploring as there weren’t a ton of families waiting with children to try it out and take some pictures.
We are very aware of what works for toddlers in a zoo. We rank child friendliness, not by what rides, or the quality of the “petting zoo” they might have for kids.
We think it is child friendly when we don’t have to lift the kids up to actually see the animals, when kids and families have places to stop and take a break, or stop and really watch the animals, and when kids can walk from exhibit to exhibit – and are eager to – because of fun and interesting things along the way (beyond simple “zoo cards” – cards kids push into sound boxes that tell them things, kids are more tactile than auditory, then want to touch, not listen, so kid friendly zoos, in our minds, let them touch!).
This was definitely a zoo we would like to come back to visit again. i mean we only got to visit Africa, we didn’t even see North America.
When we returned to the hotel we found it looked very much like a war zone. It was under renovation and when we arrived they had just lost all power and there was a work crew tearing up tile in the front making a ton of noise. We packed our things quickly and left for our ride to Floyd, VA.
Lonni found this little town online and thought the hotel would be an interesting stay. He was right. It was a quaint little town with a great general store and the Hotel Floyd was beautiful.
We had a two bedroom suite with flat screen TV in every room, satellite and what was supposed to be Internet service. 
Everything was great until we went to check in, and they didn’t have our reservation and gave us a different room from the one we requested and then the Internet did not work. We were not able to blog on-time that night because of it. And that was really frustrating.
Lonni wrote a note on one of their “customer” cards about it, in the room. But the bottom line is, little things, like Internet, like having your reservation actually exist – those are management things. A beautiful hotel? That’s a builder/designer thing. And the builder/designers, they don’t run the hotel. Beautiful management makes an establish, and the not-so-beautiful management will break it. Thus, we spent that night with mixed feelings. We loved the suite, but we were frustrated by the experience thus far.
We walked to dinner at this little Mexican restaurant, El Charro. The food there was definitely not as good as we have had it elsewhere. But it was food, and Mexican food at that (we do love our Mexican food). We headed back and went to bed.
Not to steal too much from the next morning’s post, but we had to login later to post, so I thought I’d add in a bit about the morning resolution of our frustrations. Lonni chatted with the manager on Monday (he hadn’t been there when we checked in). He was apologetic about the problems, particularly the internet – which he knew had been happening on and off.
Lonni also dug out his confirmation number and showed the managers. It was hard to refute our missing reservation since Lonni’s confirmation number lined up with their sequencing… they just didn’t have his in the sequence. But it demonstrated that it was something he couldn’t have made up or guessed at, and we wanted them to know that this was a pre-planned trip (and really planned!).
Lonni didn’t ask for it, but the manager said he’d refund a portion of the room totalling about 33% of the night’s cost. That was a heafty refund on their part, and the manager’s friendliness evidence that, despite his staff, he knew a thing or two about customer service.
Given that, it’s likely that we’ll try to find a way to stay here again in the future for a multi-day stay, and give them another chance to see how it goes. They seem to be on the cusp of having a great little hospitality business, with just a few kinks to work out. Once those are, they’ll be a great stay in the Roanoke and Western Virginia area.
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