Susanville, We Have A [Lodging] Problem

If you've followed this blog for any amount of time you'll know that I've sold my hotel-going soul to the Hilton Family*, via Hilton HHonors they take pretty good care of me and it's kind of fun to watch my point balance grow.

So far in seven years of traveling for work I've never had a problem finding a family hotel near where I need to be -- sometimes (rarely) there may be a 20-30 minute drive but those are offset by the hotels that are, in some cases literally across  the street from where I'm trying to go.

Until now. I'll be in Susanville, California for a work trip at the end of July and while looking at the map you can kind of tell that Susanville is a little out in the middle of nowhere its when you get to Hilton's website that you realize how far out in the middle of nowhere it is... There's not a single hotel within the family within 50 miles -- the furthest their search tool will search.

It looks like I'll be staying in Reno -- about a 90 minute drive -- since this is just a one day (for work) trip I don't think that will really be a problem. I've never been to either city before and there's an In-N-Out in Reno but none in Susanville...certainly a contributing factor.

Which brings us to the next dielemma: Which airport shall I fly into? Flying into Reno, in a vaccuum would seem to be the most sensable especially if I intend to stay overnight there, plus it would be nice to add a new city to my personal route map. With the immutable facts of my travel -- the airline I'm flying (United-though-I-will-still-call-it-Continental) and the type of fare I'm purchasing (unrestricted/fully flexible/refundable), Reno (RNO) comes in at about $1000 more, or a little less than twice, what the fare to Sacramento (SMF) is. I can't justify that much of a difference to save a couple hours of driving, especially on a project that's low budget to begin with, but because I can't make anything easy it doesn't end there.

[[View the fulll route map here... be warned it's a large file]]

Chico (CIC) and Redding (RDD) were both in the running for "new city on the route map" status but with longer drive times than and roughly the same fares as Reno. So in all likelihood I'll fly into Sacramento again -- same city but a new terminal has opened since the last time I was there adding at least a little visual interest. An outside possibility, though, is Medford Oreagon (MFR) -- fares are roughly the same as Sacramento, I have a grandmother in the area and I was planning on a little bit of a road trip up that direction to stop in and say hi anyway... but being a 4 1/2 hour drive I think I'd rather do that after my work commitments are taken care of rather than hop stright off a plane and spend five hours in a car,

Whichever way I go it's certainly not the end of the world...

Lincoln

*- The Hlton family is Hampton Inn, DoubleTree, Embassy Suites, Hilton Garden Inn, Hilton, Conrad, Waldorf-Astoria, Homewood Suites, and Home2 Suites