# You're moving across country, could you avoid paying for a hotel?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youre-moving-across-country-could-you-avoid-paying-for-a-hotel/574999>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [March 17, 2011, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youre-moving-across-country-could-you-avoid-paying-for-a-hotel/574999 "2011-03-17T04:08:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\
**Post date:** [March 17, 2011, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youre-moving-across-country-could-you-avoid-paying-for-a-hotel/574999/21 "2011-03-17T17:11:12Z")

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Back in grad school I got a 30 day bus pass (no rail passes in the USA) and traveled across country one summer, sleeping at the homes of friends and relatives. If there wasn’t anyone I knew, I stayed in college dorms (many colleges rented these out during the summer), so i technically stayed in no hotel or motel rooms. (The dorm rooms were also a _lot_ cheaper than motel rooms – important on a grad student’s income). I contacted everyone in advance, by the way, and cleared it with them first. Simply showing up at the door and asking for a bed severely bums people out.  
The one exception was at Lake Tahoe, where I had a relative who was an executive at a casino. He put me up in a room at his hotel that night – for free.

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**Author:** ![pbbth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f9ae1b/32.png) [@pbbth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pbbth)\
**Post date:** [March 17, 2011, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youre-moving-across-country-could-you-avoid-paying-for-a-hotel/574999/22 "2011-03-17T17:13:25Z")

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I couldn’t drive across the country and have free beds available. What I did when I moved across the country was move to a city with public transit so all I had to do was sell my car, put my stuff on a moving truck to be delivered, and hop on a plane. When I got here there were trains and cabs to get me where I needed to go so the whole move took about 5 hours.

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