Budget Travel - Maryland and DC area

BF and myself will be in the area mid July for 5 days or so. I have been researching hotels/motels in the areas of Antietam (Hagerstown). BF wants to stay one night in Hagerstown, we will stay 2 nights with friends in Germantown MD, then one night in DC area, prolly VA, and one night on the coast. I was promised real crab cakes!

This is one activity we will be attending: (JULY)
Saturday, 11th and Sunday, 12th, Confederates on Turner's Gap- Demonstrations, including infantry and artillery drill, cooking and soldier life scenarios, will be held throughout the day both Saturday and Sunday. All are welcome and events are free to the public. For more information, call South Mountain State Battlefield at (301) 432-8065.

Should I take reviews from TripAdvisor seriously? BF likes the lower prices, and I like nice clean rooms. A fridge is a must, and internet access is a plus. Shooting for less than 100/night, he wants to go cheaper. I don't. Any suggestions?

Most chains will provide at least a mini-fridge upon request. If the DC suburbs night was on a weekend and you don't want to coordinate with hotel management, I would be looking toward Hyatt (specifically a Hyatt Place or Hyatt Summerfield Suites). I do see SPG in your profile and note I am admittedly predisposed to booking Hyatt.

During the week, any Hyatt anywhere near D.C. is going to crush a $100 a night budget.

I will check out your suggestions. Thank you.

Since you're posting in the Budget Travel forum, I feel compelled to share the place I usually go when in the DC area:

http://www.hosteldc.com/ (Hilltop Hostel)

It's located literally across the street from the Takoma station on Metro's Red Line (15 minutes to the center of the city). A bed is (last I checked) $20, but you can get a private room (shared bathroom, but it's not that busy) for $60 with a bunk bed with a double on the bottom and a twin on the top (you can squeeze 3 in the room if two of them are fairly close...).

Being a hostel, there's a shared kitchen downstairs with a fridge. I've always had my things in hostel fridges respected.

Might be a bit under your standards, but to a true budget traveler like me, it works perfectly fine. It was also the most comfortable bed I've ever slept in on the East Coast...

Have you checked out Best Western lately? They have been doing some great things with some of their hotels and they are the largest hotel chain in the world, have rock bottom prices and have a stay 2 nights get 1 free promotion.

I checked one out last week in IL and was very impressed.

Have you checked out Best Western lately? They have been doing some great things with some of their hotels and they are the largest hotel chain in the world, have rock bottom prices and have a stay 2 nights get 1 free promotion.

I checked one out last week in IL and was very impressed.

The thing about Best Western is they are not cookie-cutter hotels. This is both a good thing and a bad thing: good in that each property has individual character, so it's more like a local establishment (and indeed, they are usually individually owned franchises members of the BW marketing cooperative), and bad in that an excellent experience in one hotel may not translate at all to a hotel even in the same city.

This is, of course, in contrast to, say, a Hampton Inn, Marriott Courtyard, or any other number of midrange hotels whose rooms all look exactly the same and you know you'll have a relatively consistent experience from location to location.

That said, BW's standards are nowadays pretty high, and I've rarely heard of bad experiences, so it's definitely an option to look into.

I will check out the BW websites. I know the first night will be somewhere in Hagerstown, near Antietem. Night 2 and 3 will be with friends, and the other nights, who knows? We are just going to "wing it", without reservations. I trust my BF, he knows the places where we are going.