Originally Posted by
pdlamb
That means I wouldn't recommend making two months' reservations ahead of time, though you might plan a slack day every week (so you wouldn't lose more than a week of reservations). Unless you hit a major university town during graduation, I wouldn't expect too many problems with all the rooms being taken east of the Mississippi River.
For what it is worth, in six months of travel across the US, I was able to stay somewhere every night and rarely made any reservation more than three days in advance and most often the night before. I did run into college graduation weekend in Burlington VT. I took advantage of the "free cancellation more than 24 hours in advance" option several times. I altered my routing a few times to take advantage of either a better rate or availability or because an timing/severity of a weather event was different than forecast a few days before.
I definitely wouldn't make reservations two months ahead of time and in my case did perfectly fine without reservations even a week in advance. If I made them further out, I would favor options than allow free cancellation.
I also had a small number of special situations where I was able to cancel and get a refund despite being too late to normally do this:
- The Ramada Inn in Decatur Illinois had at least two bedbugs I squashed before I decided to check out. This was before I even spent the night, and I checked out with my reason and was later able to get refunded.
- The Thunderbird Inn in Mountain Home, Idaho had a philosophical objection to bringing a bicycle into the room and didn't have separate storage that would be available when I wanted to leave in the morning (7:30am). They refunded me and I found someplace else. Fortunately, this was the only motel in all the US that wouldn't let me take my bike into the room.
- The Knights Inn in Baker City, Oregon refunded me when I came one day later than originally planned. A storm came through with stronger winds than originally expected so I came a day later.