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Or so it seemed at first.

The next day we quickly got our act together and gave it the old "college try." We researched long and hard using Internet search tricks we'd learned in several of our courses. My roommate was a Communications Major, so he had a class specifically devoted to this. And as an American History major, I had experience using specialized electronic databases, as well as being able to wrangle primary documents out of even the major commercial search engines. So we designed a road map around where the cheapest places to stay in the United States, and lo and behold: we ended up being able to go everywhere we wanted to! It was an amazing trip. We traveled from the Pacific Northwest down the West coast, through the beautiful deserts of Southern California, Arizona and New Mexico, stopped in New Orleans before venturing into the deep south, then up the East Coast to New York, and back West via Canada.

After we got back from our incredible journey, a bit dusty and tired out but totally inspired by our experience, we decided there were two very important facts that people need to know about traveling in the USA. More specifically, accommodations in America. First, it can be cheap to find lodging no matter where you are, be it the heart of Manhattan or the middle of Nowhere. Secondly, it's REALLY HARD to find cheap places to stay in the USA and Canada and most people end up getting screwed. Fortunately for us, we had the time and resources to geek out a bit on it, and plan out a cheap trip (I mean really cheap). But what about everybody else? What about all the backpackers we met, who could only travel for a couple weeks due to their limited resources, while we were able to travel for over two months. It's not like we're rich: far from it. But we figured out how to stretch our dollars further than many people could vaguely hope for. We felt really bad for all these cool and amazing people we met, who wanted to continue traveling with us to the next city or National Park, but who had to go home to their boring summer jobs.

So we decided that people need to know about all the secret discounts on youth hostels in the USA that we were able to dig up. We did what we could by sharing our tricks with friends we made along the way. But how many people did we reach? Twenty? Thirty? Fifty even? Not nearly enough. We figured there must be a better way to get the word out, and let people know they can travel far and wide on a dime. That hostels offer coupons and online promotional codes, for example. So we decided to put everything we knew up on a Web site. And this is it: Hostels America.

We even got support from our favorite faculty members, who were vexed about the high cost of academic conferences and field study events. Not all college kids can afford accommodation in the official four star hotels that the University Administration always seems to book. Why can't students get discounts on cheap hostel accommodation in major US cities? For that matter, why can't University Professors get good deals on lodging as well? That's how the thinking went, and so our profs joined in to make this dream a reality. Giving students, backpackers and even professionals the tools to find cheap hostels throughout North America. That is what we are all about.

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