Jamie H.
Yelp
tl;dr The hotel is safe and clean. The staff is friendly and tries, but sometimes fails, to accommodate. It's old construction, so don't expect to not hear everyone around you walking and going up and down steps. Don't expect the HVAC to keep the room very cool. Would I stay here again? I'm not sure, but maybe.
When I'm reading reviews for unfamiliar hotels in unfamiliar areas, the first things I'm interested in are:
1. Is it safe?
2. Is it clean?
Sacajawea Hotel passes both of these tests. Staying here wouldn't make me fear for my health or safety.
So with that covered, don't be afraid to stay here. Now on to the detailed review.
First the positives:
The hotel is beautiful. I'm told that it's a very popular wedding and/or honeymoon venue. That makes sense. There are plenty of postcard-worthy pictures to be taken there.
The staff is friendly. When I travel, I require a supply of medicine that has to be refrigerated. The rooms don't have refrigerators (weird in this day and age), so the clerk offered to keep my medicine and ice-pack in their staff refrigerator. I was impressed with this accommodation.
The bedding and accompaniments are luxurious. There were two delicious squares of huckleberry white-chocolate candy and a small bottle of lavender spray for the pillows, an extremely nice touch. Everything looked, smelled, and felt clean, soft, and inviting.
Next, the not quite as positives:
The clerk, while friendly, was overwhelmed and a bit forgetful. One of the things you're told to expect when you check in is a glass of champagne and a cool lavender hand-towel. She forgot, so we had to ask. Not a real problem, but a symptom.
I have tinnitus, so I need some sound to help me sleep. Also, some air movement helps. I asked the clerk if the hotel had a fan I could borrow. She said she would ask maintenance for one. That was at 3pm. At 6pm, I went to the desk and asked her the status. She said, "We just gave out the last fan to another guest. There's a dollar store down the road. They may have one. Also, we have free earplugs in the room."
Earplugs aren't really an option to stop your ears from ringing, so we made the walk to the dollar store. It's about a quarter-mile from the hotel down a busy road that's clearly not meant for pedestrians. When we got there, the dollar store told us that they were out of fans. Our fault, I guess for not calling first.
I used my phone to play rain sounds instead. Not ideal, but better than nothing. When we were checking our room to make sure nothing was left behind, I found a sound-making machine in the top drawer of the nightstand. I would have been good to be told that was there when I mentioned that I need sound to sleep.
Next, we found out why the hotel offers free earplugs. Our room was next to the stairway. You could hear people going up and down the stairs. Also, the people in the room above us walked around all night, so there was lots of creaking.
To be fair, the clerk did offer to move us to an upstairs room if the noise was too bad. However, the hotel has no elevator and I wasn't feeling like lugging a bunch of luggage up stairs.
Another barrier to peaceful sleep to me is temperature. When we first entered our room, the temperature was about 75 degrees. The HVAC was set to 62. When I picked up the remote, it had a note taped to it that said "Don't set this lower than 68 or it won't work." I changed it to 68. It still never really cooled the room. If you put your hand by the vent, you could feel a very slight air-flow of sort of cool air. Being an old hotel is no excuse for this. The HVAC unit had an LCD display on it. It was just poor quality.
If this review sounds like I have mixed feelings, it's because I do. The people were nice and the place was beautiful. The HVAC may be a deal-killer, though. I'll reiterate, don't be afraid to stay here. Just be prepared for some things that might not be up to the standard you would expect.