Thanks so much everybody, for your contributions and the kind words!
Brud, I really appreciate your sentiments. You're a class guy.
I understand the question about the hotel prices. It really is a LOT of money for a week-long hotel stay in the Ashburn area. I searched the internet exhaustively last week, and on average, the lowest price I could find on any of the hotel reservation services was about $110 a night, for a hotel in the Dulles/Ashburn/Sterling/Herndon/Fairfax/Chantilly/Manassas areas, with high-speed internet, during that first week of camp. That's how we came up with the $550 figure. I'm hoping it won't be much higher than that by the time I actually book the room.
These are definitely the highest prices I've seen since I've been doing this, but in the past, I've always reserved the room at least a month in advance, since I was paying out of my own pocket, generally on a credit card. My wife and I decided we just couldn't afford to do that anymore. I'm still paying off last year's training camp trek.