Wheels Motel In Greybull Gets Modern Update For A New Generation Of Visitors

It’s often said you can’t go home. But sometimes you can, and it’s a beautiful thing.

That’s certainly the case for Chris Harwood and his wife Roxanna. The couple returned to Chris’ hometown in 2017 to take over the Wheels Motel in Greybull after Chris’ father’s health became an issue.

Returning home to Greybull was something Chris never thought he would do. He left when he was a young man, joining the Navy to see the world.

“I had a vision of this place as a child,” Chris told Cowboy State Daily. “And to be honest, I didn’t think I would ever come back.”

The hotel had not been his favorite thing at all growing up.

“It was a lot of work,” he said. “And my parents didn’t hire help until we were gone.”

That made him feel like his day was all work and no play.

“Growing up, we cleaned rooms, and we built motels,” he said.

But when he got a call from his grandparents in 2017, saying that his father’s health was forcing him to sell, Chris started to see the hotel differently.

He and his wife were not loving the 9 to 5 life, and they’d already been talking about owning their own business. So far, though, every idea they’d had seemed over-saturated in Loveland, Colorado, where they’d just bought a home.

Second Chances

Still, Chris didn’t think his wife would go for moving to a tiny town like Greybull. He even asked her once.

So, when he asked her again, he fully expected to hear, “No way, José.”

While Roxana had initially resisted the idea, she had never forgotten her father’s advice.

“He had always said to work for myself,” she said. “Don’t work for a paycheck. Once I’d gone through the experience of working for someone else all day long, then going home and being so exhausted — I didn’t have a life or friends or energy to do anything.”

Some days were also much longer than 9 to 5, as the two often found themselves having to take work home with them to keep up with the demands of their bosses. And, on top of all that, they were also commuting an hour or two each day to get to their jobs in Fort Collins, Colorado.

“We weren’t getting a lot of quality time together,” Roxana said.

Given all that, taking over the family motel in Greybull suddenly seemed like a brilliant idea.

“It was timely, and it kind of checked all of our boxes,” Chris said.

“It was a perfect fit,” Roxana agreed.

Guests Might Sleep, But Motel Owners Never Do

Still, the two quickly realized they faced a daunting task, both physically and financially.

“This business doesn’t ever sleep,” Chris said. “And it’s seven days a week.”

That can mean guests arriving at 2 am who need to be checked in. Or it could mean fixing broken equipment at 10 o’clock at night.

“We walk like 6 to 8 miles every day in the summer at the motel,” Roxana estimated. “People check in early, they check in late. You have to just be ready for everything all the time.”

For Roxana, the erratic schedule often meant baking banana bread at midnight for the following morning’s complimentary grab-and-go breakfast, when the motel suddenly got a rush of unexpected visitors.

Banana bread is the couple’s go-to for the motel. It’s filling and delicious, and something that they can easily make every day. But it’s funny in some ways, too, that banana bread is such a savior. Because growing up, Roxana had never really liked bananas herself. In fact, her family teasingly nicknamed her Roxana Banana because of that.

But Roxana has a killer banana bread recipe that she loves, and that everyone else seems to love. In fact, it’s gotten lots of rave reviews on sites like TripAdvisor and Expedia.

Elbow Grease Can Buy A Lot

On top of all these day-to-day business demands, the couple found their new motel also needed a lot of extra TLC to really get off the ground.

“We had a little confidence going into it, just because I had grown up here and I was comfortable with the business,” Chris said. “But my gosh, every aspect of the house and the motel really needed —”

“Lots of love,” Roxana finished. “And it’s just not a one-person job. Since his dad was running it by himself for a couple of years and he couldn’t… he had a bad back.”

That had meant there were a lot of deferred maintenance issues that were fast becoming urgent.

“It was super overwhelming for sure,” Roxana said. “We didn’t do it all at once. It was just a slow and steady upgrading process.”

They had very little money to work with after purchasing the motel. So the couple focused on easy and obvious things that they could do themselves to increase curb appeal. Getting rid of weeds in the cracks, for instance. Putting up a new sign. A fresh coat of paint here, a new fixture there.

“Really, though, the ground level was just kind of getting people in the door,” Chris said. “When my parents were operating the motel, they took good care of it and it had a good reputation, but my parents weren’t Internet savvy, so there was no real online presence.”

Roxana had some experience with that, so she helped get the hotel listed with all the usual suspects like Booking.com and Google Maps.

“I updated all of Google Maps for the entire town when I got here, because it was all out of date,” Roxana said.

Retirement And Happily Ever After Is Back On Track

That first year especially, the couple plowed as much of the motel’s cash flow as possible right back into the motel, focusing on making it great again.

While they couldn’t afford to upgrade anything in the rooms all at once, they could go room by room, taking on the most glaring problems one at a time.

Their budget-conscious approach has paid off in a big way.

They were able to pay the motel off in just three years, and now they’re on track to pay themselves a salary of around $179,000 this year, leaving a profit of almost $80,000 for the hotel.

That’s putting the couple’s life goal of retiring by the time they’re 50 on track as well.

“Coming back now, I appreciate this place in a totally different way now,” Chris said. “You know, I went to the Navy and saw a lot of the East Coast, and I have no desire to go back there.”

It’s only now, looking through the lens of adulthood that he can really see the place he grew up, and realize that it was better than he thought.

“The older I get the more I appreciate Wyoming,” he said. “If you have a family, Wyoming is really fantastic. We really kind of live in the Shire over here in the Bighorn Basin. It’s a great place.”

Roxana, too, feels that Greybull is a special place. She’s even joined the local Economic Development group, and she’s a secretary for the Chamber of Commerce.

“I’ve done three or four murals all over town,” she said. “And (the chamber) is working on a business directory to give to residents. I feel like if I’d tried to join like the chamber or any kind of economic group in like Fort Collins or Loveland, that I would have been too intimidated. But here I have a voice and a vision, and I’ve already seen a lot of that come to life and it’s a pretty welcoming community.”

She also loves the way people in town are so nice to each other.

“I feel like this is the last place where there’s like real cowboys,” she said. “People who will, like, take their hat off when they see me, and I was just like blushing. ‘Oh, my goodness, like he just took his hat off and opened the door for me.’ How nice is that? It was just so charming.”

Both Chris and Roxana say they now couldn’t imagine going anywhere else to live.

“Even if we were to sell the motel, I don’t know where we would go,” Chris said. “I guess if we did sell the motel, I think we would probably still live in Greybull, just closer to the school.”

Contact Renee Jean at [email protected]

Renee Jean can be reached at [email protected].