Hotel Coffee.

A dear friend of mine since high school got married in Duluth this past weekend. It was a seven hour journey to Minneapolis where my husband and I left our son with the grandparents for the weekend. We figured he would have more fun going to zoos and playgrounds while being supplied with all the foods that we don't have in our house because of my allergies, rather than going to a wedding for people he doesn't know. I couldn't have been dismissed with a hug faster.

What should have been an additional two hours to Duluth stretched into three than almost four because of the traffic. The ever stylish station wagon we have broke the 150,000 mile mark during that stretch. Nothing is showing those miles more than the lack of squish our bums received as a cushion for the 500 mile drive we embarked upon that morning. We had to trade off driving because the driver's seat was so lacking in comfort, one could not endure it for more than four hours at a time. While my husband is literally a rocket scientist, I am arguably the more intelligent one. Arguably because it took me until the return trip to think of this, use the pillow in the back seat to sit on. Eureka!

He can skip stones. I just relocate them with a splash!

The next morning, after sleeping in past 5:30 (because the early bird was with his grandparents), we still needed our morning fix of coffee. I had noticed the "coffee maker" the previous night when I brushed my teeth before bed. Generic would be generous for the coffee the hotel provided. Having anticipated this, I was prepared. As a government employee, my husband is used to less than enjoyably coffee (especially from hotels being as he travels a lot). He was already pouring a paper cups worth of water into the machine and opening the grounds when I pulled out my secret weapon. A french press, coffee grinder and a bag of home roasted coffee beans, dark french roast his favorite.

It took four paper cups worth of hot water cycled through that machine on the bathroom counter to fill up the French press. One large French press made just enough coffee to fill our travel mugs. With mugs in hand, we went on a leisurely stroll down the board walk along Lake Superior. We put our fingers in and then wrapped them around the mugs. Even on a seventy plus degree day, Lake Superior is frigid. I tried swimming in it once when I was in sixth grade at Gooseberry Falls. Once was enough.

Traveling with the coffee grinder, beans and a French press may have made this trip the best. Our bums were very sore by the time we returned and our son now thinks I am the Stig (Top Gear reference) because his over caffeinated mom was tired of sitting on a hard driver’s seat, but our moods had been drastically improved by the consumption of a naturally creamy mug of coffee that had a natural cinnamon spice to it. (I chewed a few beans on the return trip while I drove and the taste was very good, even if they weren’t chocolate covered!)

We remembered all the holiday trips we had taken without such enjoyable coffee. Glacier National Park for our parents 30th anniversary and 50th birthdays (the rationing of bottled water is not a coffee addict's friend), New Orleans for grandparents 50th anniversary (chicory doesn't improve coffee in our opinion, but beignet are delicious), and Los Vegas for our honeymoon (for the price of a hotel room on the strip you'd think their coffee would be better, but the diagonal elevators at the Luxor are very unbalancing after a yarderita, or so I was told the next day!) are just a few examples.

Now don’t get me wrong. Each of those trips were awesome, just not their coffee. Now I know we could have gone to a café instead of drinking hotel coffee in some of those cases, but nothing beats a cup of freshly roasted beans from home.