Wicksteed

Can you be more specific? That's really interesting to me because sometimes I wonder that. So I'm right to choose a Days Inn for $75 over a local hotel that costs $55? Or would I have to go up past $100 to avoid stain problems and things like that?

This is in a city of 80,000 people - Bellingham, WA. 45mi Vancouver and 90 mi to Seattle, WA if that helps you answer.

I primarily chose the Days Inn because of the strict no smoking policy but now I think there are other, more disgusting reasons I should avoid the $55/night ones.

I'm not from the south but in most areas of the country you aren't very far away from perfectly dark skies.

Google this:light pollution map

Seeing a perfectly dark, un-light polluted night sky doesn't require hiking. I haven't seen such a night sky yet but from the way people describe it, it sounds like the single most beautiful thing you can look at. I really want to see it someday but I keep on putting it off. Then you will have seen something that only a small % of the population will ever see, something Socrates described as "the fairest and most perfect of visible things." There's something called the zodiacal light and it's bright enough to cast shadows on the ground in perfectly dark skies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bortle_scale