Cheap Vacations Warning
Most years, my wife and I try to fit in a few days (or a week) in southern Colorado. We've been going to old mining towns or the ski areas in the off season to do a little sightseeing and fishing. It's another great area for cheap vacations! It's well worth a visit to Durango, Purgatory Ski Resort (now Durango Mountain), Silverton, Ouray, Telluride, Pagosa Springs, Creede, and other communities scattered among the fourteeners (that's how the locals refer to the neighboring mountains exceeding 14,000 feet in elevation).
My wife and I once booked a hunting cabin near Creede, Colorado at a great rate. Judging by the internet site's photos and text it looked really good.
We had stayed in other cabins in the area on previous cheap vacations and had good experiences.
It was late August so we would have the ranch pretty much to ourselves. At that altitude and time of year it would be nice and cool, with afternoon showers. We were looking forward to a relaxing cheap vacation!
But the cute little log cabin was painful. The "logs" shown in the photos were just slats sawn from logs. Under the slats was tarpaper, and under that was a two-by-four frame. It was easy to tell when you entered the cabin. It was all exposed, since there were no inside walls (and no insulation). At least there were partitions to define rooms. In the front room there was an ancient butane-burning cast-iron hot plate sticking out from the sidewall, right next to the kitchen sink... also fixed to the wall. There was a cabinet with counter top along the front wall, and a serviceable refrigerator and butane heater against the back wall. Along the other sidewall were a wooden kitchen table and two wooden straight chairs near the bedroom entrance, no couch or padded chairs to be found. When I made reservations, I had asked for a queen-sized bed, and I had been advised only full-sized beds were available. Now I understood why. The entire bedroom was smaller than a queen-sized bed! The full-sized bed only left 8 inches along the side and a little less at the foot. The good news was that the bathroom was the same size as the bedroom. Did I mention the lack of ceilings? Air and sound circulated freely over the partitions. The fishing and scenery were great, and it was nice to be awakened the first morning by a low flying flock of Canadian Geese... but I soon discovered an undeniable desire for a softer chair! I can sit on a rock for hours while fishing, but I need something softer when I'm relaxing. We spent two uncomfortable nights in that cabin, then bailed out and finished our cheap vacation in an inexpensive but comfortable motel in Lake City, Colorado. From Lake City we four-wheeled across Cinnamon Pass to Silverton, and eventually drove back to Arizona. Although it started out bad, we had been able to turn the trip into an enjoyable one by improvising. The moral of this story is all cheap vacations aren't the same. Creede is a great area to visit. The fishing and scenery are wonderful. But that cabin was unforgettably uncomfortable. My cheap vacations warning is passed along to help you avoid my experience. This link may help you find a Colorado cabin. A Google search using the keyword phrase free vacation warning returns listings and even ads that can help you avoid scams..
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