Oh my. This isn’t what I had expected.
I pulled my suitcase through the door of a dimly lit hotel room that smelled unnervingly like a funeral home.
Wooden bedframes and antiquated lamps stood out against the floral carpet and lacy bedcovers. It was a quaint room and I was thrilled to see a coffee pot and hear the calls of seagulls outside my window, but for some reason I felt unnerved.
When I had booked the OurGuest Inn and Suites in downtown Port Clinton last Saturday, I had known I wasn’t getting anything luxurious for $50 a night. But this, I realized, didn’t feel like a hotel room at all.
It felt like being alone on the third floor of Miss Havisham’s house in Great Expectations.
Every sunrise story starts the night before, and the night before I watched the sunrise from the Marblehead Lighthouse, I didn’t get much sleep.
I got settled in to the room, and went out into Port Clinton to find dinner. At 9 p.m., everything was dark, abandoned and closed. I finally drove through Wendy’s and brought a burger back to the room. I had writing to do anyway.
The elevator shook so mightily on the way down to the lobby that I avoided it altogether on the way back, running up the empty staircase to the room.
By one o’clock in the morning, I had finished writing and was ready to crash for the night. But I was rattled for some reason. Every creak in the floor made me jump. I deadbolted the door and felt compelled to shove my suitcase up against it as well. It bothered me that the key they gave me had safety tips on it, like “report suspicious behavior immediately.” I couldn’t shake the desire to pack up my stuff and leave.
Finally, I laughed and decided that the overwhelming dead-flower smell had gotten to my head.
It was 1:30 a.m. by the time I set my alarm for 7 a.m. and turned the switch on the old lamp over my bed. I had to admit the bed was the most comfortable of the three I’d slept on this trip.
When my alarm sounded at 7 a.m., approximately two seconds after I finally went to sleep, the bed felt overwhelmingly warm and comfortable.
But if I was going to make the Marblehead Lighthouse by sunrise at 8, I had to get going. I pulled myself out of bed and started the coffee pot. This hotel, at least, had a coffee pot, a hair dryer and a few other essentials that the Motel 6 had lacked.
It was close to 8 am. and rays of sunlight were already warming the sky when I said farewell to the OurGuest Inn and hit the road toward Marblehead.
I worried that I wouldn’t make it in time, but just as I pulled into the empty parking lot, I caught a glimpse of the sun peering around the side of the lighthouse.
In the heyday of wooden schooners, when ships carried merchandise in barrels from the Port of Sandusky, they risked striking the rocks surrounding the Marblehead peninsula. Formerly known as the Sandusky Bay Light, the Marblehead Lighthouse has warned ships of the nearby rocks since the mid-1800s.
I found a large rock to sit on close to the water and sipped my coffee.
I mused that I had seen more sunrises in the last 30 days than in the last couple years. I hadn’t prioritized them, I guess, until now.
I took another sip of coffee. The lighthouse stood, silent and proud, against the glowing sky. Water lapped at my boots.
This was worth waking up for. 