In October 2000, my wife and I decided to take an auto trip across the western United States. Our travel horror story occurred one night in the Big Sur area of California.
For some strange reason, every motel we checked had a no-vacancy sign. We finally found a beautiful motel that had a vacancy. The front of the motel was draped with elegant vines laden with red flowers. We were particularly impressed and looked forward to a very pleasant, restful night. We considered ourselves fortunate to have found such a beautiful place.
The desk clerk informed us that we were indeed fortunate. They had only one room available, and it was ours.
Opening the door, we found the room rather tacky, and the TV picture was horrible. The set even had some control knobs missing.
I returned to the front desk to complain and overheard the conversation with a newly-arrived guest. The motel had discovered they had another room available, because he was also receiving the last room available.
When I returned to our room, we realized the mattresses sagged so badly that I knew we would awaken with a horrible backache. This called for drastic measures. Risking likely cockroaches, I placed the mattress on the floor to give it some support and spent the night there.
We spent a night in 30 different motels on our trip, and the other 29 were lovely. I guess we were blessed, and our travel horror story did have a happy ending.