Two months before a planned trip from Reno, NV to Palm Springs, CA, we made reservations at Virginia Creek Settlement. We were going to travel down 395 and going to do some sight seeing along the way. Since we were taking our dog with us I found places that would accept him. I loved the idea of a private cabin along a creek, and booked the reservation. I called two days before leaving to confirm and also to ask some questions about weather and what we would need to bring. We arrived about 3:30 pm after a long drive.

The office/resturant had a closed sign on it. We looked for more entrances or people to talk to but couldn't find anyone. I walked down the driveway and my husband drove down. We saw several cars/trucks parked and a cabin with alot of wood stacked on the porch. We hollered "hello" trying to find someone. We thought this might be the owners house, but as we approached, a large black dog got up and seemed to be guarding his property. We got back in our car and drove around to where the cabin was that the lady had told me we would be in. I thought it might have been left open for us. It was locked and the outside porch didn't look as though it had been made ready for us. We drove around again and since we couldn't find anyone, we left. It was after 4 pm. We needed to find a place for the night that would accept our dog. We stopped at the RV park down the road to ask the lady if they would take a dog in their cabins...but they don't like to. She was very helpful and tried calling Virginia Creek Settlement for us, but they didn't answer and she got their voice mail and left a message. She said this had happened quite a few times before and that these were new owners. We had to drive quite a ways back to the town and stopped at the first motel we came to. Luckily they accepted dogs. Not only that, but our room backed up to a nice grassy area with a BBQ, picnic table, and was right along the river!

The next morning on our way out of town, we stopped at Virginia Creek Settlement to register our complaint. The man, the owner, was rude and not at all apologetic . He said he didn't know we were there and couldn't answer the phone because he had his sons in his arms. He also said he'd had a sign in the window telling people where to go to get a room and showed it me. It was a very confusing sign with rectangles and arrows all over it, and wasn't very clear. He said he didn't know how much plainer he could make it. I told him we had gone around back where the sign indicated and we thought we had found his house but was afraid to approach because of the large dog on the porch. He said his dog wouldn't hurt anyone. I said we didn't know that and weren't going to take a chance! He stated he wouldn't have left the dog on the porch if it was viscious. But again we didn't have any way to tell if it was friendly or not, plus our dog was in the car and we didn't know how this dog might react to ours. I had given our visa when I first reserved with his wife and I wanted to be sure it wouldn't be charged. He said he hadn't put it in yet. We left without even an "I'm sorry this happened". It was a bad experience and we will never go back. Instead we would stay at the nice motel we found along the river.