Hotel booking is done!

I just made the last hotel reservation for our trip! We're all set through Denver. After Denver, we're not 100% sure of our route, as it depends on whether our other car has arrived in Dallas (in which case we'll take a detour there to pick it up), so we might have to make those hotel reservations on the road or just drive up off the highway.

I'm excited about the fact that we're a little more prepared hotel-wise than we were last time around. Being able to drive straight to our hotel rather than going place to place checking for availability (and cleanliness...did we see some filthy places last time!) is going to save us a lot of hassle. Plus we've been able to find some places which are a little more off the beaten path. It'll be interesting to experience a wide spectrum of hotels...from national chains to local hotels to bed and breakfasts to rustic cabins without running water to campsites!

For your next trip, a FANTASTIC resource when researching places to stay is tripadvisor.com. You can read reviews from real people-- not the hotel-selected rave reviews hotel owners post on their website--to help decide whether the hotel will work for you. After this trip is over, we're going to put up our own reviews of the places we stayed at. We owe it to the web community; tripadvisor.com has been a godsend for trying to preplan this long trip!