The Stanley Hotel

Last night was my wife's holiday party at the Stanley Hotel. Most of us stayed overnight, and there were a lot of...hurting people this morning. Fortunately I was not one of them. I snapped this photo quickly, as it was 13 degrees F (-11C) outside.

The Stanley Hotel is probably most famous for being the setting of Stephen King's "The Shining." The popular movie adaptation uses a different hotel (in Oregon), but both the book and the movie actually produced by King himself were set here. Supposedly it's haunted; we took the "ghost tour." The poor woman giving the tour had no idea she was about to try to convince 21 scientists and engineers that this place was haunted. I just bit my tongue when she talked about the granite storing paranormal energy.

The history lesson was extremely interesting though. The original Stanley Steamer was a car (who knew?). The Stanley's invented a type of gelatin-based photography and sold it to George Eastman (as in Eastman-Kodak). After F.O. Stanley's second bout with T.B., he moved to Estes Park and built what was to become the Stanley Hotel as a summer getaway.

And no, there were no paranormal incidents. I did, however, feel the need to write REDRUM in the fog on the mirror after my shower this morning and leave it for Nichole to find later.