Americas Best Value Inn

Stayed here while on a bicycle trip, and the Bighorn Lodge is a totally average, totally respectable hotel. Clean, with basic amenities. Everything you need for a night, but not many frills. TV with a small selection of 15 – 20 channels, fridge and microwave, small batch coffee machine, and obviously your own bathroom and shower. Gets the job done.

The last couple of times we stayed in Grand Lake, we stayed at Gateway Inn, which we loved. We stayed at this hotel due to the fact it was a family get together and we were bringing dogs. We stayed for 2 nights. The hotel was nothing special, it wasn’t as clean as I would have liked, and there was hair in our bathtub when we arrived. The AC didn’t work that well, we woke up hot in the middle of the first night and couldn’t fall back asleep. No coffee pots, there is coffee in the lobby, but they don’t open until 8. What really annoyed me were the owners though. They were a couple from a different country, super hard to understand, and incredibly rude. There was a really muddy car parked outside the hotel the first night, the next morning it was gone, but there were clumps of mud still there. The owner’s wife started knocking on my door telling me we needed to clean up our dog ****. I told her about the muddy car and that we are responsible dog owners and take our dogs up the street to the dog park. She kept going on about how it was our dogs, and then she just shook her head and walked off. Later, the husband had cleaned up the mud, but she never came to apologize. I don’t like when people swear when speaking to me, and I don’t like being accused of something I didn’t do.
Don’t come here. Dirty rooms and rude owners. There are other hotels that accept pets. These people kind of ruined the nice, small town feeling you expect in Grand Lake.

I’ll give you the most important point you will want to know about a motel right off the bat: The Bighorn Lodge (the name to look for on the sign) was very, very clean. I have no complaints whatsoever about the bathroom or bedding. The room was dust-​free and in good condition — small and somewhat dated, but that’s not unexpected. The towels were even new and fluffy! I paid $ 99 for a room with two queen beds on a weeknight, which was reasonable for a tourist trap like Grand Lake in summer. The rooms have real, old-​fashioned keys and not keycards — the first time I’ve seen that in fifteen years! I imagine Grand Lake has extremely low crime, but I wouldn’t keep valuables in your room anyway, since only the knob locks (there is a deadbolt you can lock from inside but not outside). Check-​in was friendly enough, and check-​out consisted of a note to leave my room key on the front counter. :)
The location is conveniently walkable to everything, but then, it’s hard not to be when your town is less than a mile from beginning to end. The rooms all face south, and while you can’t quite see the lake, at least you are overlooking a log cabin hardware store and not a refinery, right? There is a small ice cream stand next door which also sells food, in case you are so incredibly lazy you don’t want to walk the 600 feet to go someplace else. (The ice cream parlor, Dairy King, isn’t listed separately on Unilocal,but they are pretty good!)
There is a small hot tub, by the way. I did not use it. It wasn’t visibly offensive in any way, though.
Four stars when compared to other inexpensive motels, not compared to the Ritz. I hate unfair reviews like that.