Tuesday, December 06, 2011

Second cross-country road trip in 2011: Day 6 (slow start, comments about various hotels)

Our sixth day of travel across America was marked by a late start. Though our trip from St. Louis, MO to Columbus, OH was one of the shorter drives, we didn't get into Columbus until 5PM or so. We didn't do much in Columbus. Actually, we didn't do anything other than get a meal at Chipotle and watch some TV in the motel, er "hotel" room. That's the problem when trying to plan ahead for a trip in cities that you don't know. Finding good hotels for a good price in a good area of town is very hard, even with online reviews.

Our hotel in Lake Havasu was spacious, but dingy.

The original hotel I booked in Albuquerque was in a very sketchy neighborhood, so we opted to cancel the reservation and stay at a Homewood Suites near the airport instead. Homewood is very nice and does accept pets, though for a very hefty fee of $100. The average (even at other nice hotels) was $25, so $100 is a bit over the top; particularly since you can just drop your dog off at the nearest Petsmart for about $30 overnight lodging, and that includes one-on-one human attention and a free meal. Note to Homewood, lower your pet fee!

The motel, er, again I mean "hotel" we stayed at in Oklahoma City, OK was also very sketchy and dingy.

The lesson I'm slowly learning is to stay away from the less expensive nationwide hotel brands that are in the big cities. Spend a little more to get a decent place, and try to pick towns that are a bit outside of the area, as smaller outlining towns tend to have higher quality versions of the nationwide hotel brands.

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