Sandra CH Smith A writer and actor, Sandra arrived in Eureka Springs in 1993 after spending seven years sailing alone from San Francisco to 1837 miles off the Galapagos in her Ericson 35 sailboat. She has brought back not only art treasures from Mexico and Central America which adorn the Inn, but also a sense of serene timelessness which sets the mood at Cliff Cottage Inn.

No newcomer to Bed & Breakfasts, Sandra opened Philadelphia's very first B&B in 1978 when she was a starving poet reciting her verses to jazz on a weekly radio show and existing on a steady diet of raisins and peanuts!

An accomplished chef, Sandra learned to cook on an 18th-Century woodburning stove in the south of France. Her cuisine also reflects the tastes of Scotland where she studied as a child, and manages to include a hint of the Tropical flavors she learned to love while living in Jamaica and traveling around the Caribbean. She has been a guest chef on a CBS-TV cooking show and her cookbook-memoir, "A Cook's Tour of Epicuria - One Woman's Adventures" has become a very popular souvenir for guests to take home as a memento of their visit.

Sandra began her love affair with the Ozarks and specifically, Eureka Springs, from the moment she arrived....she had sold her boat in Puerto Vallarta and become a landlubber after a near fatal accident at sea off Guatemala. While trying to save her boat from sinking after a temporary crewmember fell asleep at the helm and broke the boom off, she got the "message" to "Go to Arkansas!". While the young crewman lay huddled on the floor, paralyzed by fear, it took Sandra over 4 hours to right the boat and she has since learned this was something of a miracle. The designer of her Ericson 35, Bruce King, lost his boat and entire crew in a similar accident. While sitting in a cafe in Puerto Rico trying to figure out what to do with the rest of her life, Sandra met some fellows from Springfield, MO and she told them she was going to Arkansas in a few days and was that anywhere near Missouri (she had no clue where Arkansas was located!) They said it was one State away and suggested she go to Eureka Springs...."there are people like you up there!" (She didn't know if this was an insult or a compliment, but decided to make her way to Eureka Springs and she has been here ever since!)

Sandra's favorite pastime (besides cooking) is sharing her enthusiasm for the surroundings with her guests. On cool summer evenings or brisk winter nights, she may be inspired to share her sea stories with guests. (While sailing alone, she created the "As the Anchor Drags Radio Show", reading poetry and stories on the air to hundreds of Pacific boaters and landlubbers with VHF radios and managed to read on her radio program the entire book, "Treasure Island", while in a hurricane hole in the Sea of Cortez.)

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The Good Old Days of Bed and Breakfasting
by Sandra CH Smith, Your Friendly Innkeeper

Iin the mid-1970s, when I opened the very first B&B ever in downtown Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in a house I rented, built in the 1700s on the smallest square downtown (Lantern Square), you didn't put out a sign,you didn't have soaps with your own logo, you didn't have stationery with a fancy line drawing of the Inn, you didn't advertise in guidebooks, chic magazines or newspapers, you didn't have an 800 number (in fact, you didn't ever answer any calls for reservations....the reservation service you paid $30 a year and 5% commission to did that for you). 

You didn't spend thousands on brochures and mailers, you didn't send newsletters, you didn't have a reservation program on a computer because you didn't have a computer, you never talked to another innkeeper because there weren't any......all the rest were out on farms in the Penna. Dutch Country and there weren't even any in Bucks County!

You didn't organize Mystery Weekends, Gardeners Retreats, Victorian picnics, candlelight dinners, sunset dinner lake cruises, airplane rides.....none of this.

What you did do was hurry and scurry each time the reservation service called to see if you wanted a guest for that weekend. After a very detailed verbal description (by Stella who ran the service) of the potential visitor ('Harvard professor, 59, single, with 30 years tenure, divorced 8 years, all grown kids out of the house, likes to play chess and listen to classical music, loves exotic cuisine, doesn't smoke, loves to walk, coming for an academic conference') - you knew more about your potential guest back then than you knew about your ex-husband of 20 years!

So, you said to yourself, 'Hmmmmmm, do I want to entertain a divorced Harvard professor this weekend or not?' If you needed a little cash and didn't have any other exciting things going, you hurried around and cleaned the bedroom you usually slept in, you moved your undies out of the top bureau drawer and pushed most of your clothes (at least the ones you didn't want to wear that weekend) to the back of the only closet. You quick cleaned out the tub and sink, stripped the bed and ran to the laundromat to wash the only set of sheets you owned - well, after all, you were a starving poet existing on a steady diet of raisins and peanuts and knew you would make a terrible waitress like the rest of the literati. 

So you opened your historical cottage as a B&B ~ dug out that extra set of daffodil-yellow (read: ugly) towels your mother had sent you last year for your birthday, and raced to the supermarket to buy some bagels, muffins, cheese, fresh fruit, some exotic coffee beans, and if you were lucky enough to have any moola left over, a small posy of fresh flowers for the bedroom!

The place looked pretty nice and you were just ready to sit down and relax, when you remembered you had a date that night and the guest was going to be arriving after you had already left for the hospital charity ball at the Bellevue- Stratford Hotel around the corner.

You quickly scribble a note to tack to the front door: 'John from Harvard - I forgot I had a date. Please back up, turn around and walk 42 steps down the cobblestone lane to the end, turn right and walk 14 steps to the corner pay phone. Call 732-4009 (your date's answering machine number on which you will put a message that the guest should turn around and retrace his steps and he will find the key to the door under that cobblestone painted purple to the left of the front door, that in case you're not back in time for breakfast, you've left it all ready in the icebox and the percolator just needs to be plugged in, there's a box of real oatmeal next to the stove if he feels like making some in the morning, and there's some homemade cookies by the bed. You also tell him he can have a midnight snack of whatever he finds in the icebox, play any music he wants to on your stereo - the tapes are in that old shoebox under the piano - and he can check out whenever he likes, just leave the room rate of $35 on top of the parrot's cage. Oh, and a quarter for the phone call is with the key!)

When you get home the next day about noon, he has already checked out and left a little box of Lady Godiva chocolates on the piano, a single long-stemmed red rose on the lute with a note, 'I had the most relaxing wonderful time since ever I can remember.....I would sure love to meet you someday. Thanks! P.S. I love your taste in music!'

And that is how it was in the mid-seventies, downtown Philadelphia, where all your friends living in the myopic suburbs you had just escaped from were appalled that you chose to become an urban guerilla and live alone 'down there with all that crime!'  Bed and breakfasting was like it used to be in Britain and the rest of Europe where they'd put out a sign, 'Zimmerfrei' or 'Room with Breakfast', and you had to move the old lady's girdles over in the top bureau drawer before putting away your travel clothes. It was a lot easier then...homey, down-to-earth, comfortable. Today, it is big business and alas, the days of the old percolator and oatmeal porridge are gone!

P.S. If you REALLY want porridge, I'll be happy to make it for you!

About the author - After some glorious years of doing B&B in Center City Philadelphia, in 1986 (when she was 43), Sandra bought a 35-foot sailboat in California, taught herself how to sail and took off sailing alone in the Pacific for 7 years. In 1993, she came directly from the middle of the ocean to Eureka Springs, Arkansas where she bought the historic Cliff Cottage, designed and built The Place Next Door, started playing Monopoly along the street buying and fixing up cottages to be a part of the inn, and she has been having a delightful time regaling guests with her sea stories ever since!