Bill:
My standard mission is Dallas to Houston or central Texas (Austin or Fredericksburg). My IFR policy is that I always leave with at or near full fuel, and my filed alternate is almost always back home at KADS.
In addition, my "out" (you know, the one I could use when all hell breaks loose and, for example, I am on top of dense clouds and have no electrons left) is to fly west (literally, not figuratively) for a couple of hours. It is a rare pattern indeed that does not have clear skies or very high ceilings in west Texas, when the clouds are in play in central or north Texas.
YMMV, but I don't launch when conditions would not allow that sort of flexibility.
There was that time when we set out to T82 from Addison, T82 reporting 1400' broken at time of departure and the TAF for Junction (40 or so NM west, nearest TAF) calling for steady conditions; upon in-range, the AWOS was flopping between 700 and 800 overcast, and the GPS approach has 700' minimums. I went ahead and shot the approach, and was going for the gear and throttle at the MAP when we got the runway environment, chopped, dropped and landed without difficulty. In the time it took to retrieve the car and load up (ten minutes?), the ceiling dropped to 400 or so, and by the time we picked up the pizza (another 20 minutes or so), we were in dense fog, not a quarter-mile vis.
Since I had enough fuel to fly back and forth twice, with a reserve to boot, no real stress - I was perfectly prepared to just go back home - but I was glad to have all that gas riding along just in case.
Also, this was my first GPS approach to minimums at a field without approach lighting, and I was surprised at how tough it was to spot the field (it was dusk). Had I not been soundly familiar with the airport and its environment, I might well have missed it or, at the very least, recognized it too late to make an uneventful landing.
Lots to learn, and learning all the time.
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Edit:
Junction was reporting clear the whole time, and Austin was high ceilings, over 1,000'. You just never know...