JFRCalifornia
Keeper of San Juan Secrets
The Fry Canyon Lodge was an unlikely place that maybe should have never existed but it did. It was a motel in the middle of nowhere, somewhere about midway between Hite and Natural Bridges along Highway 95. It has long since closed down, but the buildings remain. But going through my old notes and journals, I realize I had two amusing encounters with that place, back in 2001 and 2002, the only times I ever stayed there. I thought I'd share.
Fry Canyon Lodge Incident #1
August 18, 2001
The intent was to arrive at Hall’s Crossing to check in early for houseboat departure, but darkness and holiday traffic conspired to send us to the Fry Canyon Lodge, which proudly displays a wooden sign that explains both its history and its function: “Backcountry Inn Since 1955.” The dimly lit wood framed complex is nestled under a high cliff on the west side of a remote stretch of Utah Route 95, midway between Hite and jackrabbits, the only obstacles in the road out there. It’s a strip motel on a roadside, quiet and dark except for the few porch lights, which seem to indicate an office, or at least where the keys and taxidermized moose heads are hanging. We walk into the lobby, such as it is, and a young man emerges, friendly but guarded.
“We only have a single, one bed.” He delivers the bad news too pleasantly, eerily cheerful. What’s he hiding? We debate whether to stay, mostly by shooting each other quick glances, hoping the poor odd fellow doesn’t notice, or pull a knife. I’m ready to sleep outside with the scorpions, but Chuck wants a bed. One with a mattress.
Suddenly the man pipes up, sensing he may lose a late night sale—we’re probably the last folks out on Route 95 tonight, maybe tomorrow too. “Well…we do have something.” We listen; he continues. “If you don’t mind the smell of fresh paint, there is something.”
Okay, what is it?
“Follow me.” And so he leads us away from the motel office, away from the only light, up a little hill behind the single-story motel and its few units, numbered sequentially starting with “1”. “It’s a house, a little house and it needs work.” He smiles as he says this. We could still run for it. But we grope through the dark up to the porch. He flips on a switch—light. A brick house. Four rooms. A little creaky.
The motel man checks on something outside. The five of us look at each other, but Khawer says it first: “Norman Bates.”
Norman continues cheerfully enough. Chuck is too tired to care. But I’m looking for bodies—behind the sofa, under the porch, anywhere—but Norman is too clever for that. The smell of paint did indeed hide the fetid odor of corporeal decay. Clever indeed. Sleep came, but fitfully, between the jackhammer air conditioner, the paint fumes, and Norman somewhere out in the dark, lurking along Highway 95.
Fry Canyon Lodge Incident #2
August 8, 2002
Las Vegas is about $1,200 less wealthy because we were lucky yesterday. Craps is the best-paying job in the world when the sevens fall at the right time, and fall they did. It is a confounding sort of reality when the sequence 7-9-8-8-9-7-4-4 produces a windfall on the table, but these same numbers on the dice, in a different order—say 4-9-8-7-9-8-4-7—leave you with an empty wallet. Obviously there’s more to it than luck, and indeed, the difference is the quality of the hotel’s buffet breakfast. You roll and pray and hope, and that’s about all the books can tell you. But good bacon, at a good price, is something you can count on.
And the bacon indeed sizzled in Vegas, to the tune of about $350 to the good. The others made out with about the same, pretty much all on the same rolls of the dice. That just about pays for the gas for the houseboat.
From Las Vegas, the drive is routine enough now where maps are no longer needed, even on the roads nobody ever uses. Of course, this can breed dangerous overconfidence. Take the Fry Canyon Lodge Incident. The self-styled “Remote Backcountry Inn, Est. 1955” was last night’s intended post-Vegas destination. On the seldom-used Highway 95, about 20 miles east of Hite, it’s the only motel for 50 miles in any direction. We just figured we’d show up, no call, no reservation.
No Vacancy. No way.
Actually, worse—the sign in the window said Closed. Closed? How can a motel be closed? It’s a friggin’ motel—it can be full, but closed? But that’s what the sign said, a crooked white board with hand-painted black letters. And, just to drive the point home, the only apparent sign of life was the steady neon glow in the window, shouting “No Vacancy”, a green “NO” over a red “VACANCY.”
Don’t panic. We’ve got two rental cars, 50 miles from anyplace else, sun setting behind us. What are the options? Chuck cursed—shoulda called! Nice hindsight, Chuck. Shubber wasn’t much help, either, but at least he was thinking about the next steps, not the ones we should have taken. Khawer, in my rented silver Mitsubishi Gallant, just sat like a Buddha. Couldn’t really tell what he was thinking.
Okay, so what to do? Three options came to mind:
“Chuck, you do it.”
“I thought of the idea, YOU do it.”
Nobody wanted to do it, of course. It was a dark night and a scary motel in the middle of nowhere, and we knew Norman Bates was up there somewhere, ready to kill us. He probably hadn’t eaten in a week, and we’d make a pretty good meal for that psycho. So we argued and bickered across the open windows of the two cars in the gravel-covered empty parking lot under the red sandstone cliffs of Fry Canyon.
It was the Buddha who acted. “I’ll do it,” proclaimed Khawer, his first words in the debate. He ambled up to the office door, while the rest of us sat in silence, ready to hit the gas if the blood started flying. But five minutes later, he strolled out of the office, down the raised woodplank walkway in front of the rooms, and turned the lock to Room 6. He had a key! The bastard did it! “I get one of the two beds.”
The two guys who run the place also run a little restaurant and pool table, nominally closed, but not for us. “You’ve got 15 minutes if you want something—we’ve only got what’s on the menu.” A slab of chalkboard in the entrance was the menu.
Hmm…the most unlikely combination of choices were scrawled by hand:
Cheeseburgers at the bar, 25 bucks a head for the rooms. Can’t beat that for comfortable rooms with highly efficient swamp coolers. By 5 AM, the loud coolers were issuing a Winter Storm Watch in the room. Khawer was shivering under a single sheet. Now I know where they keep the halibut.
Fry Canyon Lodge Incident #1
August 18, 2001
The intent was to arrive at Hall’s Crossing to check in early for houseboat departure, but darkness and holiday traffic conspired to send us to the Fry Canyon Lodge, which proudly displays a wooden sign that explains both its history and its function: “Backcountry Inn Since 1955.” The dimly lit wood framed complex is nestled under a high cliff on the west side of a remote stretch of Utah Route 95, midway between Hite and jackrabbits, the only obstacles in the road out there. It’s a strip motel on a roadside, quiet and dark except for the few porch lights, which seem to indicate an office, or at least where the keys and taxidermized moose heads are hanging. We walk into the lobby, such as it is, and a young man emerges, friendly but guarded.
“We only have a single, one bed.” He delivers the bad news too pleasantly, eerily cheerful. What’s he hiding? We debate whether to stay, mostly by shooting each other quick glances, hoping the poor odd fellow doesn’t notice, or pull a knife. I’m ready to sleep outside with the scorpions, but Chuck wants a bed. One with a mattress.
Suddenly the man pipes up, sensing he may lose a late night sale—we’re probably the last folks out on Route 95 tonight, maybe tomorrow too. “Well…we do have something.” We listen; he continues. “If you don’t mind the smell of fresh paint, there is something.”
Okay, what is it?
“Follow me.” And so he leads us away from the motel office, away from the only light, up a little hill behind the single-story motel and its few units, numbered sequentially starting with “1”. “It’s a house, a little house and it needs work.” He smiles as he says this. We could still run for it. But we grope through the dark up to the porch. He flips on a switch—light. A brick house. Four rooms. A little creaky.
The motel man checks on something outside. The five of us look at each other, but Khawer says it first: “Norman Bates.”
Norman continues cheerfully enough. Chuck is too tired to care. But I’m looking for bodies—behind the sofa, under the porch, anywhere—but Norman is too clever for that. The smell of paint did indeed hide the fetid odor of corporeal decay. Clever indeed. Sleep came, but fitfully, between the jackhammer air conditioner, the paint fumes, and Norman somewhere out in the dark, lurking along Highway 95.
Fry Canyon Lodge Incident #2
August 8, 2002
Las Vegas is about $1,200 less wealthy because we were lucky yesterday. Craps is the best-paying job in the world when the sevens fall at the right time, and fall they did. It is a confounding sort of reality when the sequence 7-9-8-8-9-7-4-4 produces a windfall on the table, but these same numbers on the dice, in a different order—say 4-9-8-7-9-8-4-7—leave you with an empty wallet. Obviously there’s more to it than luck, and indeed, the difference is the quality of the hotel’s buffet breakfast. You roll and pray and hope, and that’s about all the books can tell you. But good bacon, at a good price, is something you can count on.
And the bacon indeed sizzled in Vegas, to the tune of about $350 to the good. The others made out with about the same, pretty much all on the same rolls of the dice. That just about pays for the gas for the houseboat.
From Las Vegas, the drive is routine enough now where maps are no longer needed, even on the roads nobody ever uses. Of course, this can breed dangerous overconfidence. Take the Fry Canyon Lodge Incident. The self-styled “Remote Backcountry Inn, Est. 1955” was last night’s intended post-Vegas destination. On the seldom-used Highway 95, about 20 miles east of Hite, it’s the only motel for 50 miles in any direction. We just figured we’d show up, no call, no reservation.
No Vacancy. No way.
Actually, worse—the sign in the window said Closed. Closed? How can a motel be closed? It’s a friggin’ motel—it can be full, but closed? But that’s what the sign said, a crooked white board with hand-painted black letters. And, just to drive the point home, the only apparent sign of life was the steady neon glow in the window, shouting “No Vacancy”, a green “NO” over a red “VACANCY.”
Don’t panic. We’ve got two rental cars, 50 miles from anyplace else, sun setting behind us. What are the options? Chuck cursed—shoulda called! Nice hindsight, Chuck. Shubber wasn’t much help, either, but at least he was thinking about the next steps, not the ones we should have taken. Khawer, in my rented silver Mitsubishi Gallant, just sat like a Buddha. Couldn’t really tell what he was thinking.
Okay, so what to do? Three options came to mind:
- Go back to Bullfrog, 65 miles away, and hope for lodging. Maybe call first.
- Go forward to Hall’s Crossing, where we’re headed anyway—and sleep outside. OR
- Stay here, and sleep outside. Hell, sleep on the road; nobody comes by anyway.
“Chuck, you do it.”
“I thought of the idea, YOU do it.”
Nobody wanted to do it, of course. It was a dark night and a scary motel in the middle of nowhere, and we knew Norman Bates was up there somewhere, ready to kill us. He probably hadn’t eaten in a week, and we’d make a pretty good meal for that psycho. So we argued and bickered across the open windows of the two cars in the gravel-covered empty parking lot under the red sandstone cliffs of Fry Canyon.
It was the Buddha who acted. “I’ll do it,” proclaimed Khawer, his first words in the debate. He ambled up to the office door, while the rest of us sat in silence, ready to hit the gas if the blood started flying. But five minutes later, he strolled out of the office, down the raised woodplank walkway in front of the rooms, and turned the lock to Room 6. He had a key! The bastard did it! “I get one of the two beds.”
The two guys who run the place also run a little restaurant and pool table, nominally closed, but not for us. “You’ve got 15 minutes if you want something—we’ve only got what’s on the menu.” A slab of chalkboard in the entrance was the menu.
Hmm…the most unlikely combination of choices were scrawled by hand:
- Halibut with béarnaise sauce
- Roasted chicken with garlic fettuccine
- Cheeseburger with chips
Cheeseburgers at the bar, 25 bucks a head for the rooms. Can’t beat that for comfortable rooms with highly efficient swamp coolers. By 5 AM, the loud coolers were issuing a Winter Storm Watch in the room. Khawer was shivering under a single sheet. Now I know where they keep the halibut.
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