Hotel reservations are cheaper than airplanes. Airplanes are cheaper than people. Don't get confused by the price of cheap things.
That said, I rarely made hotel reservations in advance, and often made either the leg going, or coming, on a day other than planned. I also left the plane at an enroute city, and returned commercial once. Bad weather is not to be played with in our size aircraft.
I started with that attitude, and my first long cross country was canceled because the return trip weather was not going to be flyable. The next, converted to driving due to storms at the departure date. I never regretted those decisions.
Much later, I left at noon a day early to miss being in a potential violent storm POSSIBILITY, and got south of the area of danger the day before my original plan, spent the night in a junky motel in a tiny town. The next day, completed my trip, and in the afternoon, the predicted possible violent thunderstorms did occur, and an airliner flew into one, lost all the engines, and dead stick landing on a country road. They did not have any windshields, huge hail bounced all over inside the cockpit as they "flew" their glider out of the worst of the storm. Looking for a place to land without a windshield is tough.
That all took place at the time my original flight plan had me flying through that airspace, April 2, 1977. I am an old pilot, not a bold one.
The weather always wins.
stupid.
