Category Archives: Travel

Gasoline leak shuts down Walla Walla’s landmark hotel just days ahead of reunion weekend

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We’re flying home on Tuesday, just a couple of days ahead of a “reunion weekend” planned by our alma mater, Whitman College.

Getting out of Dodge just in time, it appears.

The Marcus Whitman Hotel and Conference Center, the largest and most prominent of the hotels here in Walla Walla, was suddenly closed and evacuated last Friday due to chemical odors in the basement. The parking lots are empty, the hotel entrances locked and secured by yellow security tape.

Over the weekend, pure gasoline was found in a 10-foot sump in the hotel basement. Apparently the gasoline somehow migrated from a service station across the street into the hotel basement, although the two locations are not connected by any pipeline or drain, and it isn’t known how the gasoline made its way across the street.

Now, according to the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin, there is a two-pronged effort underway to remove gasoline from the hotel basement, and empty the tank at the service station so that the process of locating the leak can proceed. The UB’s story does note that they still have to find a contractor for the leak detection.

So far, there is no estimate of how long the hotel will have to remain empty while the volatile gasoline is removed and the area determined to be safe.

It now appears likely that anyone who booked one of the hotel’s 133 rooms will have to find accommodations elsewhere. That may not be easy, nor will the alternative digs provide the ambiance of the Marc.

I imagine there’s a lot of anxiety in the administrative offices over at the college today!

Full Circle

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I entered Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, 58 years ago, in September 1965.

As I recall, freshman had to live in the college dorms. That was my first time living away from home, and it was mostly a great experience.

But there were some vestiges of an earlier, more regimented college lifestyle at Whitman. One of those things was a rule requiring that we “dress up” for the one meal served on Sundays. For men that meant a coat and tie. I didn’t like having to comply with silly things like this, so I made a habit of avoiding the dining room on Sundays and instead walking over to Smitty’s Pancake House, just a short distance away at the edge of the campus, for a leisurely breakfast. I recall having many Sunday meals there during that long freshman year.

Smitty’s was just a year or so old at that point. Although Smitty’s is long gone, I found a photo on the Walla Walla Union Bulletin’s website. In all it’s glory.

When we drove by the Whitman campus, Smitty’s building, somewhat remodeled, is still there at the same location, now the home of Clarette’s Restaurant, what appears to be a throwback to mid-20th century diner. The building had a new facade at the entrance, and the dining room was somewhat reconfigured, but it was much as I remembered.

For old times sake, we ate there for dinner Sunday night. Just like old days. The food, while not in same class as the up-scale spots along Main Street catering to the visitors exploring the Walla Walla Valley wineries, was good and plentiful. I had a burger which was more food than I could eat.

Before we went in, I posed for a photo out in front. It felt like a step into a time machine.

[Note: My first attempt to post this last night had problems displaying the photos properly. A second try this morning succeeded.]

Lost

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That’s where Apple Maps left us on Wednesday afternoon.

On recent trips elsewhere, I’ve found Apple Maps to be very much improved, and I had mentally declared it my go-to mobile mapping app.

So when we landed at the Tri-Cities airport in Pasco, Washington, and picked up a rental car, I quickly plugged in my iPhone, opened Apple Maps, and asked for the proper route to our destination, the Courtyard in Walla Walla. Maps quickly displayed a series of instructions, and displayed a turn-by-turn map.

Coming out of the airport, it directed us to enter the roundabout and take one of the exits to a certain street. The problem was that there was no roundabout in sight, and there was only one way ahead, a right turn onto a highway on ramp. Okay, I know the app can quickly locate you and get you back on course. But instead, Maps seemed confused. It stuttered. It repeated itself. It said to turn at the corner. There was no corner, as we were now on a highway heading to Richland, not far but not where we were supposed to be going.

After several exasperating minutes waiting for the arrival of better instructions, we declared defeat. Took the next exit, found a parking lot to stop and regroup. At that point I switched to Google Maps. Bingo. A new instruction set took over, and we made the hour drive to Walla Walla without another error.

Had we stepped into an Apple Maps dead zone? Was this an isolated issue? I don’t know, but it was unsettling, for sure. Since no one has to look at a map any more, were lost without these turn-by-turn directions delivered to our cell phones.

But if that’s the biggest travel glitch we run into on this trip, I’ll consider us very lucky!

* Update: I think we’ve located the problem. We were using Apple Maps via Apple CarPlay on our rented vehicle, an Infiniti SUV (much larger that the car I had reserved, but it what was available on the ground when we arrived last week).

The problems appear to stem from the implementation of CarPlay, which somehow added a significant delay to the app’s tracking of our position and driving directions.

As an experiment, we used Apple Maps yesterday without using CarPlay and the accompanying display. Unemcumbered by all that, Apple Maps performed flawlessly, as we had been used to previously.

So the problem isn’t with Apple Maps, but with Apple CarPlay. And not CarPlay generally, since we’ve used it many times elsewhere without issues.

Leaving Hilo

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Well, our week in Hilo is just about over. We enjoyed our last breakfast downstairs in the restaurant here in the Hilo Hawaiian Hotel. Definitely not a five-star hotel, but really pleasant, a great view of Hilo from the rooms on the ocean side, and decent food/reasonable prices/and really pleasant servers. This remains our favorite spot on the Big Island. Yes, we enjoy the slow pace of the Hilo side of the island.

We had lunch yesterday at the Coconut Grill in the SCP Hilo Hotel, formerly known as the Hilo Seaside. Check the window behind me in the photo below. The lettering is mostly worn off, but it says: 1957 March 9 Tidal Wave, with a line showing how high the water was as it swept through this area at the end of Banyan Drive.