Why I'm Not at Bucknell

I've never thought I could justify paying for hotel rooms every night during these cross-country trips.  During past trips, I have turned rewards points from our credit card into Marriot gift cards, and rarely paid for a hotel room (once I've run out of gift cards, I've usually chalked up enough stays to be able to pay for one or two with points).

Sometime between my last trip (Dec 2019) and now, the exchange rate between Chase VISA points and Marriot gift cards has changed a great deal, in the wrong direction.  However, hotel.com gift cards could be exchanged for the old Marriot rate.  So I brought hotel.com gift cards which were, allegedly, good at most major hotel chains, including Marriott.

Except they're not.  I had two Marriott free nights and enough Marriott points for four nights, which I had used up by today.  Today was when I would begin using the hotel.com gift cards.  

At least I called this morning to check whether the hotels around Bucknell would take them, so I didn't have to drive all the way down there to find out.  I called five places, including the Marriott, and none took the gift cards.  I called this morning because I had some reason to suspect trouble; I had asked at a couple of places during the trip (including the disastrous night in Ironwood, MI) and the answer was always 'no.'

So since I was temporarily out of Marriott resources, and the gift cards wouldn't work where I needed them to, it would cost me around $150 in real money to take a side trip to Bucknell.  Some other time.

I am imagining being in the desert country of eastern Washington and Oregon, or in Nevada today, and discovering that I would have to pay cash for every hotel room from now on, until I made it back to the East Coast.  I don't know what to think about that.