BURNS, Ore. — There was no room at the inn last night after the Washington Examiner arrived and took the last spot. Normally at this cold and dreary time of the year, the manager of America’s Best Value Inn said she has vacancies aplenty. But for the last week or so it’s been booked solid.
Other hotels are similarly strained. The difference is journalists and possibly federal law enforcement. She estimated that at least 10 journalists were occupying rooms (and paying for them!), and news teams constantly come and go.
An NBC crew checked out as we were grabbing the continental breakfast. One of the departing team speculated that the government would wait to lower the boom on those occupying buildings at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge until the journalists got bored and went home.
That may take awhile. According to the booking site Expedia.com, demand for flights to the nearest commercial airport in Redmond, Ore., are likely to push up prices “18 percent in the next seven days.” The site further said that 57 people were looking for flights to this remote area of Oregon right this second and that 74 had already taken the plunge today.
Before heading on to the refuge, we stopped at Ye Olde Castle Family Restaurant and sat down, quite by happenstance, next to a journalist stringing for the New Yorker.
H.L. Mencken once said that if you chuck an “egg out a Pullman window … you will hit a fundamentalist anywhere in the United States.” Heave an egg out a window in Burns these days and you’ll hit a journalist — and give him some color to add to his copy.
