Travelogue: The Hotels

We stayed at 10 different hotels on our trip. The average price was $100, but they were (of course) vastly different.

1. Extended Stay America: Rochester, Minnesota $87

• very nice room with small but complete kitchen and full sized refrigerator (many of the other rooms had mini-fridges)
• no pool
• grab & go breakfast

2. EconoLodge: Keystone, South Dakota $71

• tiny room (Jeff thought he had booked us two queen sized beds, but realized when we got there that it was just one, so the kids slept on the floor)
• nice pool & hot tub
• good breakfast  
• kind of a ways out of town--not good for walking to dinner

3. Super 8: Powell, Wyoming $129

• really nice Western -y decor, especially in the breakfast area
• small but nice pool
• good breakfast
• laundry facilities

4. Sawtelle Mountain Resort: Island Park, Idaho $89

• nice room
• no breakfast (went to Pond's for breakfast as well as dinner the night before)
• nice pool, but in a separate building

5. Wood River Inn:  Hailey, Idaho $129

• this is the one we all agree was the best
• very nice room
• great pool
• very good breakfast (first time we had the "make your own waffle" option)
• nice, easy to use computer center
• great location, easy walking to downtown

6. Bridge Street Cabins: Stanley, Idaho (two nights) $119/night

• rustic room, but nice
• tiny bathroom
• difficulty with WiFi, but it did work eventually
• door had a broken lock plate, so we could only deadbolt it from the inside, while leaning on it
• next door to a bar & grill that was hosting a lively wedding reception our second night--and by lively, I mean "loud guests talking all night long right outside our cabin that made me want to go out and yell at them to shut the hell up."

7 Crystal Inn: Brigham City Utah $100

• pool
• nice breakfast
• nice room 
• laundry facilities

8. Motel 8: Laramie Wyoming $62

• nice basic room
• no pool
• no breakfast
• well out of town, but we walked across the parking lot to a really good Mexican restaurant

9. Grand Hyatt: Denver, Colorado (two nights) $113/night

Kids:  "Oooh, Aaah!"

• beautiful lobby--kids especially very impressed
• great room
• great pool
• great downtown location--this was our deciding factor here, so that we could walk to the baseball game, and that alone made it worthwhile
• had to pay for parking
• no breakfast--if we wanted to eat at the restaurant downstairs, it was $18 for the breakfast buffet
• no free WiFi in the room. I didn't mention it in any of the other hotels, because they ALL had it and it never occurred to me that anyplace wouldn't have it!  I could use the WiFi for free down in the lobby (but it was a pain to haul my computer down there) or I could have paid an extra $10/day to get it in the room. In the grand scheme of things, $10 isn't that much, but I wasn't about to pay it. 

10. Colfax Inn: Iowa $80

• pool being renovated
• nice breakfast
• nice basic room

When we were looking for hotels on this trip, cost was the first factor. A pool was the second. Going forward, I will also make sure that free WiFi is available in the rooms, because that irritated me a LOT. I realized that I also like the breakfasts a lot, even if it's just a bagel & some yogurt.