Hampton Inn & Suites Grants Pass

Grants Pass is objectively the middle of nowhere, and I mean that with love.

The airport down the road fogs in so much your flight's got better than a coin-flip chance of cancelling, so I drive. Eleven hours and twenty-two minutes from LA. I can reach the state of Texas faster than I can reach Oregon.

But before I found myself in this hallway, I actually booked the cheapest place in town. I was sure the company I was consulting for would hose me on expenses, so I booked the kind of place you don't ask too many questions about. It was a dump.

Third day in, one of the execs finds out and tells me to get a real room, they'd cover it. Only catch is the lodges around there don't earn a single point, and I'm not sleeping somewhere that doesn't earn me a point.

So the Hampton Inn & Suites Grants Pass became my place. The carpet looks like somebody spilled the Rogue River straight down the hallway: working pattern for a working town.

A fire pit out back, that's about all I needed. Plus the best biscuits and gravy in the state of Oregon are five minutes away at a place called the Powderhorn.

Might be the real reason I keep finding my way back.

—HCG