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Our Story: How Explorer Rest & Recreation Came to Life

It started, like a lot of good ideas do, on a road trip.

In 2017, my wife Lisa and I were in Yellowstone National Park when we started talking about something bigger than a vacation: what if we built a hotel concept we could eventually bring to national parks across the country? It was a big, slightly impractical idea — the kind you float on a long drive and half-expect to forget by the time you’re home. We didn’t forget it. It just took a few years, a pandemic, and a very different park to become real.

The detour that stuck: Lake Erie Adventure Company

Before Explorer existed, “Adventure” was almost the name of the whole thing. During COVID, we launched Lake Erie Adventure Company, which still operates today renting kayaks, paddleboards, and bikes on the Huron River and Sandusky Bay. It was meant to be a side project. Instead, it became the first real piece of what Explorer would eventually stand for: getting people outside, on the water, in this specific part of Ohio.

Learning the business the hard way

Around the same time, I was finishing two massive hotel projects for Cedar Point as a project manager and procurement consultant: Castaway Bay Indoor Waterpark Resort and Sawmill Creek Resort. Sawmill Creek changed how I thought about building a hotel — we bought and built as much as possible locally. That single decision became a brand pillar of Explorer before Explorer even had a name.

Also during COVID, Lisa and I did what a lot of people did: we binge-watched hotel and motel renovation shows, especially (Re)Motel. Somewhere in that stretch of TV, the idea stopped being a “someday” project and started being a plan.

Pitching Richardson Design

I brought the idea to Richardson Design in Cleveland — the same design firm behind the Cedar Point projects I’d just finished. Their team, including Kristie Oldham, mentioned they’d been wanting to do a boutique hotel project for a long time. Within weeks we were meeting in downtown Cleveland, working from a concept we were calling Explorer Public House.

Working with Richardson was unlike anything else on the project. Starting from our own binge-watching-inspired mood board, they came back with three completely different concept directions — and then a fourth, the one that stuck: Rest & Recreation.

Our two brand pillars came directly out of that concept: the best possible sleep our guests have ever had (something people mention constantly in reviews), and real time spent outdoors. We also realized how well the location worked for sports travel — we’re just 2 minutes and 0.7 miles from Cedar Point Sports Center and Sports Force Parks, which wasn’t the original plan but fit perfectly.

Somewhere in there, the national-parks idea softly pivoted. This was home — Sandusky, the county where Lisa and I raise our girls. Doing our first concept where I grew up, 10 minutes from our home, instead of somewhere out west, felt like the better story.

Lisa asked for a plaid design somewhere in the rooms. Tracy Van Der Kuil at Richardson didn’t just deliver a plaid — she delivered the plaid, the specific pattern guests still bring up unprompted today. Lisa also asked, almost as a joke, about a double queen bunk room. I laughed — that bed configuration doesn’t really exist. Richardson delivered that too: two queen beds built into the back wall over a daybed, sleeping up to five, doubling as a spot to watch a game or a movie with the whole family.

When Kristie and Tracy presented the final concept, they told us: we hope you love this as much as we do — it looks nothing like any hotel or motel in the U.S. Within 24 hours of that meeting, we had funding secured. An idea that started in Yellowstone was coming to Sandusky.

Explorer Rest & Recreation logo designed by Richardson Design
The logo Richardson Design presented that day — the moment “Rest & Recreation” became real.

The old Mecca Motel

The property we acquired in 2022 was the old Mecca Motel — a place a lot of longtime Sandusky locals had fond memories of, and also, by the time we got to it, one of the city’s biggest eyesores. There was a pool with a willow tree growing out of it. Overgrowth so thick it had been blocking inspection. “Dilapidated” is a soft word for where we started.

Aerial view of the old Mecca Motel in Sandusky, Ohio before its 2022–2023 renovation into Explorer Rest & Recreation
The property in 2022 — the old Mecca Motel, before demolition began.

We broke ground on demolition in late February 2023. On the first day of heavy demo, we found the real problem: decades of patched copper plumbing and electrical that showed signs of past fire damage, unreliable enough that there was no responsible option but to gut it and start fresh. That single discovery cost us a six-figure surprise we hadn’t budgeted for, and it took a real bite out of the project’s scope.

Richardson Design concept rendering of The Explorer boutique motel renovation in Sandusky, Ohio
Richardson Design’s original concept rendering, December 2022 — the vision we were building toward.

Where we chose to spend the budget

That unexpected cost meant hard choices about where the money that was left would go. We put it into the brand and the guest experience that actually gets used every day:

  • Custom-built knotty alder furniture and beds, built locally
  • Bedding you’d expect to find at a Marriott or Hilton, not a roadside motel
  • Real outdoor space — room to build a fire, play volleyball, cornhole, ladder ball, whiffle ball
  • Suites big enough to actually live in for a few days: Explorer has seven suites between 450 and 700+ square feet, at a time when most boutique concepts run small

Lisa and I, with friends and family, personally finished the last rooms — the Explorer Suites and Studio Suites — when cash flow got tight near the end. It was a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, alongside a genuinely great crew of local contractors. We completed Phase 1 and welcomed our first guests in July 2023.

Four summers later

We’re closing out our fourth summer — 2023, 2024, 2025, and now 2026 — and Explorer is healthier than it’s ever been. We’re already deep into scouting our second location, and if this next one comes together the way we’re hoping, it’ll be somewhere near roller coasters.

The Yellowstone idea didn’t end up touring the national parks — not yet, anyway. It started at home instead, on the site of a motel most people had written off. That still feels like the better version of the story.

Quick answers

When did Explorer Rest & Recreation open? Explorer acquired the former Mecca Motel property in 2022, began demolition in February 2023, and completed Phase 1 and opened to guests in July 2023.

What was on the site before Explorer? The former Mecca Motel, a mid-century roadside motel in Sandusky, Ohio, that had fallen into disrepair before its 2022–2023 renovation.

Who designed Explorer Rest & Recreation? Richardson Design of Cleveland, Ohio, led the concept and interior design, including designers Kristie Oldham and Tracy Van Der Kuil.

How close is Explorer to Cedar Point Sports Center and Sports Force Parks? About 2 minutes and 0.7 miles.

Explorer Rest & Recreation is a 27-room boutique lodge in Sandusky, Ohio, minutes from Cedar Point Amusement Park. Book your stay or see our rooms. Planning an active weekend on the water? Check out our sister project, Lake Erie Adventure Company.

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It started, like a lot of good ideas do, on a road trip.

In 2017, my wife Lisa and I were in Yellowstone National Park when we started talking about something bigger than a vacation: what if we built a hotel concept we could eventually bring to national parks across the country? It was a big, slightly impractical idea — the kind you float on a long drive and half-expect to forget by the time you’re home. We didn’t forget it. It just took a few years, a pandemic, and a very different park to become real.

The detour that stuck: Lake Erie Adventure Company

Before Explorer existed, “Adventure” was almost the name of the whole thing. During COVID, we launched Lake Erie Adventure Company, which still operates today renting kayaks, paddleboards, and bikes on the Huron River and Sandusky Bay. It was meant to be a side project. Instead, it became the first real piece of what Explorer would eventually stand for: getting people outside, on the water, in this specific part of Ohio.

Learning the business the hard way

Around the same time, I was finishing two massive hotel projects for Cedar Point as a project manager and procurement consultant: Castaway Bay Indoor Waterpark Resort and Sawmill Creek Resort. Sawmill Creek changed how I thought about building a hotel — we bought and built as much as possible locally. That single decision became a brand pillar of Explorer before Explorer even had a name.

Also during COVID, Lisa and I did what a lot of people did: we binge-watched hotel and motel renovation shows, especially (Re)Motel. Somewhere in that stretch of TV, the idea stopped being a “someday” project and started being a plan.

Pitching Richardson Design

I brought the idea to Richardson Design in Cleveland — the same design firm behind the Cedar Point projects I’d just finished. Their team, including Kristie Oldham, mentioned they’d been wanting to do a boutique hotel project for a long time. Within weeks we were meeting in downtown Cleveland, working from a concept we were calling Explorer Public House.

Working with Richardson was unlike anything else on the project. Starting from our own binge-watching-inspired mood board, they came back with three completely different concept directions — and then a fourth, the one that stuck: Rest & Recreation.

Our two brand pillars came directly out of that concept: the best possible sleep our guests have ever had (something people mention constantly in reviews), and real time spent outdoors. We also realized how well the location worked for sports travel — we’re just 2 minutes and 0.7 miles from Cedar Point Sports Center and Sports Force Parks, which wasn’t the original plan but fit perfectly.

Somewhere in there, the national-parks idea softly pivoted. This was home — Sandusky, the county where Lisa and I raise our girls. Doing our first concept where I grew up, 10 minutes from our home, instead of somewhere out west, felt like the better story.

Lisa asked for a plaid design somewhere in the rooms. Tracy Van Der Kuil at Richardson didn’t just deliver a plaid — she delivered the plaid, the specific pattern guests still bring up unprompted today. Lisa also asked, almost as a joke, about a double queen bunk room. I laughed — that bed configuration doesn’t really exist. Richardson delivered that too: two queen beds built into the back wall over a daybed, sleeping up to five, doubling as a spot to watch a game or a movie with the whole family.

When Kristie and Tracy presented the final concept, they told us: we hope you love this as much as we do — it looks nothing like any hotel or motel in the U.S. Within 24 hours of that meeting, we had funding secured. An idea that started in Yellowstone was coming to Sandusky.

Explorer Rest & Recreation logo designed by Richardson Design
The logo Richardson Design presented that day — the moment “Rest & Recreation” became real.

The old Mecca Motel

The property we acquired in 2022 was the old Mecca Motel — a place a lot of longtime Sandusky locals had fond memories of, and also, by the time we got to it, one of the city’s biggest eyesores. There was a pool with a willow tree growing out of it. Overgrowth so thick it had been blocking inspection. “Dilapidated” is a soft word for where we started.

Aerial view of the old Mecca Motel in Sandusky, Ohio before its 2022–2023 renovation into Explorer Rest & Recreation
The property in 2022 — the old Mecca Motel, before demolition began.

We broke ground on demolition in late February 2023. On the first day of heavy demo, we found the real problem: decades of patched copper plumbing and electrical that showed signs of past fire damage, unreliable enough that there was no responsible option but to gut it and start fresh. That single discovery cost us a six-figure surprise we hadn’t budgeted for, and it took a real bite out of the project’s scope.

Richardson Design concept rendering of The Explorer boutique motel renovation in Sandusky, Ohio
Richardson Design’s original concept rendering, December 2022 — the vision we were building toward.

Where we chose to spend the budget

That unexpected cost meant hard choices about where the money that was left would go. We put it into the brand and the guest experience that actually gets used every day:

  • Custom-built knotty alder furniture and beds, built locally
  • Bedding you’d expect to find at a Marriott or Hilton, not a roadside motel
  • Real outdoor space — room to build a fire, play volleyball, cornhole, ladder ball, whiffle ball
  • Suites big enough to actually live in for a few days: Explorer has seven suites between 450 and 700+ square feet, at a time when most boutique concepts run small

Lisa and I, with friends and family, personally finished the last rooms — the Explorer Suites and Studio Suites — when cash flow got tight near the end. It was a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, alongside a genuinely great crew of local contractors. We completed Phase 1 and welcomed our first guests in July 2023.

Four summers later

We’re closing out our fourth summer — 2023, 2024, 2025, and now 2026 — and Explorer is healthier than it’s ever been. We’re already deep into scouting our second location, and if this next one comes together the way we’re hoping, it’ll be somewhere near roller coasters.

The Yellowstone idea didn’t end up touring the national parks — not yet, anyway. It started at home instead, on the site of a motel most people had written off. That still feels like the better version of the story.

Quick answers

When did Explorer Rest & Recreation open? Explorer acquired the former Mecca Motel property in 2022, began demolition in February 2023, and completed Phase 1 and opened to guests in July 2023.

What was on the site before Explorer? The former Mecca Motel, a mid-century roadside motel in Sandusky, Ohio, that had fallen into disrepair before its 2022–2023 renovation.

Who designed Explorer Rest & Recreation? Richardson Design of Cleveland, Ohio, led the concept and interior design, including designers Kristie Oldham and Tracy Van Der Kuil.

How close is Explorer to Cedar Point Sports Center and Sports Force Parks? About 2 minutes and 0.7 miles.

Explorer Rest & Recreation is a 27-room boutique lodge in Sandusky, Ohio, minutes from Cedar Point Amusement Park. Book your stay or see our rooms. Planning an active weekend on the water? Check out our sister project, Lake Erie Adventure Company.