Hotels. To book or not to book, that is the question.
We’ve budgeted the month of July for the trip and, ideally, we would like to be able to wing it day by day with no particular schedule other than a rough target number of average miles per day and some knowledge of decent stopping points. However, there are some practical problems including mainly the remoteness of some large stretches and also availability concerns in several locations along the way. This dictates a bit more structure to the trip – certainly for some stops.
Research indicates that some of the stopping points will be problematic during this or any summer vacation season. This is especially true of our major landmark stops and of the towns along the Pacific Ocean. It would make sense to book these ahead of time, but without a fairly constrained plan, we have no idea exactly which nights to book where. We’re not really keen on sleeping in the car or wasting lots of miles to drive to available locations in land, etc.
Hence the question: To Book or Not to Book?
Our current strategy at this point is to book specific hotels for each night for the first week of the trip including what appears to be the most difficult location – Jackson Hole, WY. – our first major stop. If nothing else, having the first week of days booked, gives us more time to consider the plan. We’ve booked each night with the option to cancel or move any booking up until 6:00pm on the day of stay without any cost. This gives us a fair amount of logistic flexibility moving forward, but also guarantees someplace to stay if holding the plan works out.
So far, we’re deciding not to book places in the larger cities because of significant number of options in each. It seems likely we can just wing those or perhaps book the day before as we travel. Before departing for the trip, we’ll also likely book the other major stops on the way because they seem the most risky. If we have to cancel or change it – so be it.
According to the plan, we need to have 25 different hotel bookings for the trip. Walking the value/comfort curve we have primarily selected Hampton Inn and Holiday Inn Express type locations for the single night stops and reserved the more luxury accomodations for the major two-night stops. With a bit of luck, perhaps some of the later stops will be free based on the good customer points accumulated for visits earlier in the trip, maybe!?
