By Gary M.
Let me start out by saying this time it wasn’t entirely my fault. As everyone knows, my camping days are long over, so when I decided to attend the AANR national convention at De Anza Springs in August, 2006, my only option was to stay at an outside motel and commute daily to the event. The closest such accommodations were at the Jacumba Springs Spa.
Our SCNA friend Tony had stayed there a year before when the club made a previous trip to De Anza, and he raved about it (that should have been my first warning), so I reserved a room six months in advance based upon his recommendation. In July, when I called the Spa to re-confirm the room, I found out the previous owner I had spoken to had been arrested for hiding illegals crossing from the Mexican border (only 1000 yards to the south), and the interim manager had trashed the place after having been fired by the Chicago investment firm who owned the Spa. He literally destroyed the contents in a half dozen of the rooms and took all the office equipment so there was no record on my reservation (that should have been my second warning). I reconfirmed my reservation and thought I was all set.
I arrived late in the day Sunday, Augut 6, the night before the AANR convention began. The new office manager, Miss Kelly, greeted me with perky smile. Most days (when her boss isn't around) Miss Kelly was dressed in a mini-halter top and printed wrap skirt, which exposed her thigh all the way up to the knot. If this was the dress standards, I was definitely going to enjoy the stay!
The rooms that had been trashed had all been refurnished; but, no, I was getting one of the older rooms (third warning). Actually the room was nice enough, except that the drapes had shrunk over the years and no longer adequately covered the front windows. And the TV only got one channel, TNT, so I could only watch reruns of Law & Order if I wanted. The room had no clock and no telephone, and there is no cell phone reception at all. (In Jucumba, I learned cell phones work only in a single 10-ft square zone two miles away in the Shell station parking lot – but only for Verizon subscribers. Throughout the week I would pass the station on the way to DeAnza and observe a half dozen people or so all crowded together in this tiny area trying to talk to the world.) On the plus side the water was clean, and there was air conditioning and a refrigerator. And, hey, I was only going to sleep there, right? Okay, I could adapt.
While gushing his praises about the Spa, Tony had also failed to mention it was adjacent to a 100-acre organic farm. Fertilized the “natural way” the farm also attracted every fly for 100 miles. Not large houseflies, but tiny ones, who for some reason find your ears and nose attractive places to land. Swatting at the buzzing insects became a method for constantly exercising one’s arms.
My room was at the far end of the Spa. The single-story facility surrounded a huge Olympic-size swimming pool fed by natural mineral waters. So, besides the flies, to get to my room I had to endure the fragrance of wet sulfer. An acquired taste to be sure. Kelly told me to be sure and try the healing waters of the pool during my stay, but I told her I had no bathing suit. “No problem late at night,” she said. “Almost all the guests here are overflow from De Anza, and I skinny-dip in the pool myself sometimes.” Suddenly I didn’t mind the flies as much.
“We do close up the Spa at 10PM sharp,” she warned me. You can only get in through the main door, which we lock. Otherwise you have to walk all the way around the back.” So, okay, I’ll make sure I am back by 10PM. No problem.
With that, I headed over to DeAnza to see who was there early and to register for the convention. After spending a few hours in the pool and Jacuzzi, I headed back to the Jacumba Spa. My watch showed it was a quarter to ten.
When I got there the main doors were locked and all was quiet. Kelly had lied; they locked up early! In the pitch dark I fumbled my way around the building only to encounter the sound of a large dog barking nearby. Nope, not going that way. I went around the building the other way. Another (or the same?) dog blocked my path. Damn! Now what? I could sleep in my car, but with the Spa’s proximity to the border I didn’t feel safe, not knowing who would pass by during the night. I couldn’t go back to DeAnza because their gate was locked and I didn’t know the pass code.
The only solution: find another motel. So I drove 45 minutes to the east to the next town, El Centro, and stayed in a Ramada Inn that I spotted from the road as I drive by. Great room, Soft bed. Curtains that covered the widows. No toothpaste or toothbrush (or clean underwear) however. The next morning I drove back to Jacumba to raise holy hell. (Yes, they gave me credit for the night not spent there.)
A few days later I told the tale to our SCNA buddy Tony W., who by now was also staying at the spa (in one of the nicer renovated rooms I must add). He sheepishly confessed he had left home late on that Sunday and called the Spa from the road to say he wouldn’t make it there before they closed, so it was “okay for them to not wait up” for him. So the night manager had said okay, and he closed up at 9:30 and went home! Gee, thanks Tony, I owe you one! (not!)
The rest of the week I made sure I was at the Spa no later than 9PM (Yes, they gave me credit for the night not spent there.) As a result of my misadventure they posted a map on the window directing the guests to the path how to enter the grounds after hours (so the front door is locked but people can see how to get inside anyway? Somehow I didn’t feel safer.)
The Spa’s main attraction to the town (besides the sulfur water and flies) is its bar and restaurant. When he was recommending the place, Tony said this was “the hot spot” in town where the locals met for an after hours drink, to play pool, and to listen to country-western music on the juke box. Well, the manager who trashed the place also took away the establishment’s liquor license so the Spa was no longer able to serve alcohol. So no bar crowd and no music, although the pool table was still there – its cue sticks and balls silently waiting for someone to use them. That Monday morning the restaurant was open for business so I thought I would sample the local cuisine.
I must admit, the food was not bad at all. Your typical eggs and something-on-the-side menu for about $6. Not up to Denney’s standards, but hey, what is these days? Gina was my waitress for most of the week. When I told her I was here for the AANR convention at De Anza, she volunteered she had been there with her boyfriend once and found social nudity much nicer an experience than she had imagined. She said she had a teenage daughter who didn’t mind being nude at home but was at the age where being naked in front of strangers was unthinkable. However, Gina said she might drop there by for a visit on Saturday, her next day off. (She didn’t.)
The restaurant was divided between an indoor room and an outdoor patio. I never saw anyone eat outside, probably because of the fly population. However it didn’t make any difference as the connecting doorway had no screen so the flies came and went at will. One soon learned how to hold an eating utensil in one hand and wave flies away with the other.
By the time I sat down to eat, there was only one other patrons there (my fourth clue), and we soon struck up a conversation. Seems she retired to Jacumba a few years ago to pursue her dream of raising horses and writing and publishing a sci-fi comic book. Her sketch pad was her constant companion that week as I caught her sketching people as they ate. “Downtown” Jacumba was just down the street, she told me, and consisted of a general store, post office, and chiropractor’s office. But, she said, if I wanted hay for my horse I should avoid this fella about ten miles down the road because, “he is selling bales for twice the cost of what she could get at some feed store in El Cajon.” Guess she didn’t notice my horse wasn’t tethered outside.
That night, to be extra-sure I would not be locked out again, I returned to the Spa at about 8:30PM. Since there was nothing on by one-channel television except a snowy-screened Law and Order rerun, I decided to return to the restaurant to try out the dinner menu. That’s when I met Alfred the Austrian.
Alfred, I learned, was one of the Chicago partners who had fired the previous manager and caused the subsequent office rampage. He was sitting outside on the patio in the dark, waving away the flies and chain-smoking some awful brand of cigarette. He spoke with a thick Germanic accent and liked to talk about the good old days of the Hapsburg Dynasty and the Ottoman Empire during the Nineteenth Century. At one point he leaned forward and reminded me that if the American’s had not broken their word in 1940 and supported the British, the Germans would have never declared war on us. I guess he never heard of Pearl Harbor but I didn’t feel safe arguing with him since I had several more nights to survive at the Spa.
Unfortunately I told him that Kelly had told us it was all right to skinny dip in the pool and he said he also didn’t care, but that he always replaced the water in the pool at night, so we should use the smaller but more secluded pool off to the side of the main pool. The next morning a sign appeared on the gate outside the secluded pool saying it was closed for repair. It remained there all week. Kelly told me a few days later he had sent her a memo reminding her it was illegal to skinny dip. Kelly and several others staying at the Spa spoke a few times about jumping in the pool after hours anyway but we never did. We didn’t trust how Alfred the Austrian would have reacted.
Tuesday morning I got another surprise. I opened the refrigerator in my room only to find the three cans of soda I had placed there the night before had exploded and there was sticky icy syrup coating the box’s inside walls. It was only when I also found the three Evian water bottles frozen solid that I realized the refrigerator temperature had been set too low. I could not find any dial or lever to turn in order to adjust the temperature so, instead of facing Alfred again, I just contented myself with warm water and soda.
The next day at DeAnza I happened to mention to their office staff where I was staying and they all rolled their eyes and told me how sorry they were. One staffer told me one couple who was scheduled to stay there had actually looked around and refused to stay, choosing instead to go buy a tent and dry camp at DeAnza.
On Wednesday, I returned to the Spa around nightfall only to find the restaurant closed. “We share our cook with The Chef’s Hat,” the night manager informed me. There isn’t enough business to keep both restaurants open full time so he goes back and forth between the two places.” Seeing an opportunity for a little adventure, I decided to drive the ten miles down the road to The Chef’s Hat to check it out.
There I met several other familiar faces from the AANR convention who were also testing the cuisine. Their names were Richard and Pam, and they were staying at the other nearby motel, the Lux, which was about fifteen miles away from De Anza. We traded stories about our respective motel experiences. They told me the Lux was much nicer than the Jacumba Spa except for one thing: “Don’t look under the bed as they found a nest of cockroaches there.”
“Also we found a snake in the bathtub the first night.” Suddenly the Spa was looking much better (I never had any such visitor in my room – maybe the incessant sulfur smell kept them away!)
That night I was awakened about 2AM by low-flying helicopters and dogs barking. In the morning I was told matter-of-factly the Border Patrol was chasing some illegals through the town. Just another typical evening in a sleepy border town, it seemed. Driving back to De Anza the next morning at spotted several white Border Patrol trucks driving along the border fence. The fence could clearly be seen across a clearing south of the road. There was a large microwave antenna assembly nearby, I suppose acting as a motion-detector, and it was probably set off the helicopters the night before. Looking at the border I realized no fence was going to keep people out who really wanted to get in. I also realized that Jacumba would forever be a little town in the middle of nowhere that would keep its rustic charm – and rust – because that’s the way its small population wanted it to be.
Later in the week I had lunch with Tony and I told him about my adventures at the Spa. “How could you have stayed there before and not told me about all these crazy people and the smell?”
“It’s it just a great experience?” he smiled. I think he was serious. He was staying in one of the renovated rooms with the new color TVs.
“There only one television channel!” I replied.
“Oh, I never watch television anyway. And I don’t carry a cell phone so I had no idea there was no reception.” He seemed oblivious to my pain and suffering.
Sunday morning I checked out and headed home. Kelly said goodbye, dressed in her typical outfit. Yeah, I sure regret not trying out that pool but under the circumstances, I probably should feel lucky I escaped when I did.
Followup to this story: Two years later when Tony, Patty, and I were in the area again, my curiosity got too much for me and so I revisited the spa. Not to stay overnight, but just to have lunch. Gina was still there, waitressing to the couple in the corner table. She said she actually remembered me. I guess either I made a great impression or else the number of visitors there in two years since had been lower than expected.
Many things had changed during the two years, she said. Kelley was long gone but Alfred was still around managing the place. After lunch (they still make a great burger here) she allowed us to walk through the grounds to see the improvements.
I noticed the entire place has a new coat of paint, and all the internal porticos and sidewalks were rebuilt and smooth to walk on. From the outside I could see my old room had a new set of drapes that were not transparent. And the punget smell of sulfer I had remembered was still there but much more tolerable. Also I was told, the county had shut down the organic farm nearby because of complaints from the health department about the flies. Gia also told me that all the guests now get a key to the outside door, so what happened to me can't be repeated again. Nice to know I made a contribution to the place.
Tony said he was thrilled at the changes, as was eager to stay overnight. No longer trusting his judgment, if any reader out there wants to give them a try and write me back here, I'd appreciate knowing a second opinion.
