Albert May (left) of Chicago chats with Min Choi of Korea outside of the Sanborn Park Hostel. Both were on vacation.
Photograph by Mark Kocina
Hostel Place
Once a deteriorated old house headed for demolition, the refurbished Sanborn Park Hostel hosts visitors from around the world
By Sandy Sims
Photographs by Mark Kocina
It was a Tuesday night in August when I lugged my pillow, quilt and overnight bag up to Sanborn Park Hostel in Saratoga. For years I'd noticed the little sign that says "hostel" where Highway 9 passes the road to Sanborn Park. I'd imagined the hostel would be some broken down, dusty, old building that few people cared about, much less stayed in.
I was wrong.
"I hear it's a nice place," said Gloria Bording who works at the Travel Store in Los Gatos and lives in Saratoga. The Travel Store sells the Hosteling International card, which allows the bearer to stay at hostels at a discounted rate.
Despite being a relative mystery to local residents, the Sanborn Park Hostel attracts visitors from all over the world. It's even listed in foreign guidebooks as a "wonderful place to stay," and also on the national registry of historic places.
Over the years, the number of visitors has steadily grown.
Sylvia Carroll, longtime volunteer manager and driving force behind the Sanborn Park Hostel, said the Saratoga hostel has recorded 127,000 visitors since it opened in 1979. That includes 1994 when the hostel--which normally accommodates 39 guests--overflowed one World Cup night with 64 people from 18 different countries. Sanborn Park Hostel had its biggest month ever in August 2000 with 1,000 visitors.
Hosteling as a way to travel is growing according to Toby Pyle, Hosteling International's public relations representative. And it's not just young people who are checking in.
Even though a dictionary listing defines a hostel as "supervised, inexpensive lodging, especially for youthful travelers," that situation appears to be changing.
"The fastest growing group of hostelers are seniors," Pyle said. Her statistics show that 15 years ago, only 2 to 3 percent of hostelers were seniors. Today it's 12 to 13 percent. "If seniors understand up front that it's dormitory living, they love it," Pyle said. "It's a great way to meet people and break down barriers between cultures. Families are also taking up hosteling."
Photograph by Mark Kocina
Shawn Morais (left) and long-time volunteer Art Carroll horse around at the Sanborn Park Hostel.
The concept of hosteling was started around the late 1920s by German school teacher Richard Schirmann. Concerned that young people were losing contact with nature because of the industrial revolution, Schirmann began taking his students on weekend field trips to the countryside. The "wandering school," as it was called, stayed overnight in empty schools. Today, Hosteling International reports that nearly 5,000 hostels--from castles to lighthouses to old homes--record more than 34 million overnights annually in more than 70 countries.
Knowing August is the hostel's big month, I made a reservation ahead of time. I also arrived when the doors opened at 5 p.m. so I could land a single bed. Like most hostels, Sanborn has bunk beds and single beds. But, unlike some hostels, the house is a rustic Hansel-and-Gretal-looking lodge nestled in the forest. Inside is all wood, a big stone fireplace, overstuffed couches, long dining room tables, and a kitchen with three refrigerators, three stoves, three ovens, three sinks and a long wooden table.
John Morais checked me in. Morais and his wife, Bonnie Mckenzie, live upstairs with their 11-year-old son, Shawn. Morais and McKenzie are full-time houseparents. Morais collected my fee. It's $10 for members of Hosteling International or $12 for non-members.
Then Morais reeled off the same directions I would hear him repeat over and over that evening: The kitchen has all the utilities you need, but you supply the food; label the food you put in the refrigerators; the third refrigerator is a common one for food people leave for everyone; clean up the kitchen after yourself; let the dishes air dry (Morais puts them away); and leave the bathroom clean for the next person.
His monologue went on to inform visitors that they will be assigned a five-minute chore in the morning. They must turn the lights out at 11 p.m. Checkout time is 9 a.m. Those staying another night can leave their gear in the room and come back at 5 p.m., and stays are limited to three days.
As is typical for hostels, blankets and pillows are supplied for free, but visitors supply the linens. I rented a sheet-sack for 50 cents. These are large sheets sewn across the bottom and up one side, like a sleeping bag.
The only other visitor in the hostel at 5 p.m. was a young Iranian man sitting alone by the window. Amirali Nasserian was waiting for his girlfriend to take him out for the evening. He'd been stuck with nowhere to go and had spent the day walking around Sanborn Park. The 3,600 acres of park, once inhabited by Ohlone Indians, include a campground and 15 miles of forested trails.
"It was a good way to spend the day," Nasserian said. "I needed the quiet, and it's beautiful here, but I don't want to spend another day stuck here." He said his girlfriend had the next day off work. (Hostelers like Nasserian, without cars, can also find their way to the hostel by taking public transportation to Saratoga Village and then calling the hostel for a ride.) In a couple of days, Nasserian said, he would head off to the University of Maryland for graduate school.
Houseparent Morais shepherded me to one of the girl's dorms where I dumped my gear on my bed. Then I drove the 3 1/2 miles back to Saratoga to get a sandwich. When I returned, more people were checking in.
Photograph by Mark Kocina
Thierry Gonon (right) and Binet Laurence, both of France, work on their five-minute chore. Every guest must do some chore before leaving.
Binet Laurence from Chaumont, a tiny town in northeastern France, was sitting on a lower bunk in my room. She and her boyfriend, Thierry Gonon, were traveling through California. Laurence said she'd read about Sanborn Park Hostel in her guidebook. She pulled out Le Routard, which she described as "the best guidebook in France." The book describes the hostel as being in the middle of a forest, beautiful and good for nature lovers. Le Routard states that the hostel at Sanborn Park is "marvelous."
"We wanted to stay in a peaceful place before going to San Francisco," 30-something Laurence said. "So we came here." The couple planned to hike along the trails of the park the next day.
Sue from Connecticut, who looked to be in her late 20s, took an upper bunk. She'd just finished attending a medical illustrators' conference at Asilomar and would be driving out at 5 a.m., bound for San Jose's airport.
Later, four or five people sat at the kitchen table talking about movie stars, while Laurence and Gonon ate spaghetti. Laurence translated for her boyfriend. Sue from Connecticut brought out maps from Yosemite to show the French couple, and I drew them a map to Stanford.
People stayed at the hostel that night for various reasons.
A middle-aged redhead woman sipping tea said she'd come from Anchorage, Alaska. She and her husband were bringing their 16-year-old daughter to Stanford to get her special hearing aids adjusted. An Aptos woman sitting at the table was looking for housing in San Jose.
Meegan Kliewer from Fresno studied in the living room for a physical therapy class she was taking at West Valley College in Saratoga.
There were others I didn't meet, including another Iranian, a Pole, a Korean and three people from the Netherlands.
After 10 p.m., three young German men trooped in with a young woman who dropped them off and told them to have a good time.
About that same time, a tall, stately woman named Angelika Hansen arrived. Hansen, who had a German accent, was 50-something with a tiny rhinestone glued between her eyes. She was heading home to Los Angeles after attending a sun dance--an American Indian ritual--in Oregon.
By 10:50 p.m., I was already tucked in bed when Morais called out, "You've got 10 minutes till lights out." Laurence was reading with a tiny light attached to her book. Sue from Connecticut, who had to get up early to catch a flight, asked if we could turn the light out. "Oh well," she said. "We can wait 10 more minutes." Hansen wasn't out of the bathroom yet and needed the light.
Photograph by Mark Kocina
Debbie Goldenberg of Hayward shows Min Choi of Korea directions to a hostel in San Francisco, while Sunshine, the Sanborn Park Hostel's cat, stretches out.
When Hansen finally switched the light off, the place was quiet. All I could hear were crickets--no freeways, no honking cars, no fire engines or police cars, no city hum--just crickets on a warm summer night. I imagined that the sounds of the forest hadn't changed in the 93 years since the house had been built in 1908.
The rustic lodge was constructed of half-logs from local trees as a vacation home for state Superior Court Judge James R. Welch. In 1955, Welch's widow sold the 800-acre estate for $9 million to Vernon Pick. Pick, a wealthy uranium prospector from Colorado, created a research lab on the property. When Santa Clara County bought the land as part of a new county park, Pick's research lab up the road became the county's Environmental Education Center. County officials decided the house would be far too expensive to restore at $500,000--a hefty sum back then. So Judge Welch's former vacation house was to be bulldozed.
A Los Altos woman, Carroll, brought the plight of the lodge to the attention of the Santa Clara Valley Club of American Hostels. She and her husband, Art, were club members. Kenneth Linney, also a club member at the time, said, "We could see the house was perfect for a hostel." In 1978 Carroll wrote a letter to the county offering to repair the old house and maintain it in exchange for using it as a hostel. The county accepted the offer.
"We were naïve," Carroll said. "We had no idea what we were getting into, and we only had $460 in our treasury." Professionals warned the club members that the job was impossible.
Volunteers began finding out what the pros were talking about. Carroll explains that the outside logs were supported by an inadequate frame. Workers actually scooped out the deteriorating remains of one log by the handful. The roof was rotten. Much of the flooring was rotten, and except for one room, the house had no foundation. The place needed new wiring and plumbing.
Linney said they started with the guest cottage because it was built in 1955 and was the easiest place to begin.
On July 1, 1979, the club opened Sanborn Park Hostel with 10 beds in the guest cottage. The fee was $3 per night.
Then the volunteers tackled the kitchen. "Once we had the kitchen done, we could host weddings, barbecues and cater for day users," Linney said. This brought in money for construction. While the hostel no longer does weddings and catering, they do rent the place out to nonprofit, school and government agencies for day use.
"We received grants totaling $800," Carroll said. They also received donated materials, and all of the labor was volunteered, except for the plumbing.
Photograph by Mark Kocina
Meegan Kliewer of Fresno studies for her two-week physical therapy class at West Valley College in Saratoga.
Frank Worrell got involved in 1980 because he'd needed a place to stay for a couple of nights. He wound up helping with the building and eventually served on the board for a number of years. "I did more demolition, crowbar stuff and whacking out nails than building," Worrell said. He explained that hundreds of people helped over the 20-plus years. Many came as guests and stayed a little longer to help.
Worrell remembers some of the struggles, like the time they had to replace a section of the roof because a large fallen redwood branch created a hole. "That's what happens with redwoods," he said. He recalls how a redwood branch caved in the roof of a volunteer's car.
In April 1980, 19 beds were added inside the lodge. Slowly the number of beds increased to 39. The guest cottage is now a home for a part-time houseparent.
The house is sturdy now. "Every wall is a supporting wall," Carroll said. "And we were inspected every step of the way."
Worrell said Carroll was working on top of the roof when the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake hit. "She had quite a ride," he said. A refrigerator fell over; everything in the office fell off the shelves; one of the outside gazebos originally built by Judge Welch collapsed; but the house held up well.
Worrell credits Carroll with building a third of the place herself. "Sylvia has been the driving force behind the hostel," Worrell said.
Carroll's husband, Art, agrees. "Carroll even earned her contractor's license while she was working on the house," he said. Sylvia Carroll also built the three well-constructed long tables in the dining room; she made the coffee table, the bookshelves and built all the beds in the hostel.
Carroll, whose hair is cut in a long bob, with a streak of white along one side is an attractive, sturdy, middle-aged woman. Though she was soft spoken when I interviewed her, I could tell Carroll is a practical, no-nonsense person and ready to give her opinion. "Sylvia can charm the socks off you," Worrell said. "But when she's yelling, she can hurt your ears."
Photograph by Mark Kocina
Houseparent John Morais, who has been living at the Sanborn Park Hostel for five years, folds clean sheets and towels.
Carroll said she thinks Hosteling International is getting too tight with the rules. For example, the organization has redone their signs. The traditional pine tree on the sign used to slant a little, and now they want straight trees on the signs. "I'm just not concerned about it," Carroll said about her signs with the slanting trees. Carroll is concerned, however, that the trend for hostels is moving more toward full-service facilities and away from the traditional hostels where visitors help with chores. "More services mean more staff and higher rates," Carroll said.
"The place is phenomenally successful," Worrell said, "especially for where it is." He said it's always 10 degrees cooler than the valley. "We've done no significant advertising, but the hostel's reputation has slowly spread."
During the winter, students from elementary schools come from other parts of the state to visit the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose and stay at the hostel. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts come. Many different groups, such as the Stanford Choir, come for retreats. "We're about half full most of the winter," Worrell said. During summer months, the beds are often full. They also have weekly and monthly activities that attract the locals.
The bunks were almost full the night I stayed at Sanborn Park Hostel with some 31 guests bedded down. I slept soundly that night.
"OK ladies, it's 7:30," houseparent John Morais said when he knocked on our door in the morning. I could hear the clink of cups and silverware and talking in the kitchen. I dressed, joined the others, had my banana and bought a tea bag for 10 cents. I drank my tea and washed my cup.
"You can sweep the floor in your room," Morais said and showed me where the broom was. I did my chore and then rolled up my blanket, zipped up my overnight bag and headed for work.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
