satisfiedAs it happens, the free-anywhere-nights are somewhat less valuable when I'm using them, as a Wednesday-Thursday night in the second week of December has (relatively) less expensive room ($259) than if we were booking a weekend night in a peak period. But it's still good use of the free nights, as is redeeming 20K IHG points for a night at Williams AZ on the way out, where the Holiday Inn Express is unaccountably selling rooms for more than $200/night.
I also seem to have enough Hyatt points for one free night, but there are a lot fewer Hyatts along my route than there are IHG hotels. One of the plans was to use a night in Albuquerque; however, we need to spend two nights there (I'll work remotely that day; it saves a vacation day), so it wouldn't make much sense to change hotels in mid-stay. Also, it looks like Hyatt and I have a confusion and I have a pending query to their customer service about why I seem to have two different accounts with them, with two different balances. We'll give this some more thought. None of the hotel stays booked yet are non-refundable, so we might change a few things around if more free nights become available to me.
