Sequoia Riverfront Cabins — Hotel in Exeter

The reviews for these cabins are all over the place, but it was last minute and only 1 night so I took a chance. It turned out to be a really cool experience and I enjoyed my stay. You check in at a "general store" that has all kinds of necessities and from food to beauty products, and also run down cars, taxidermied rattlesnakes, and general junk/treasures. I had to holler for help, but the guy was very friendly and we made a few jokes. Marissa, a cheerful young lady did the check in. She told me everything about the cabin and where I was going, and gave me a gallon of cold water. She seemed like she really cared and is trying to get the place turned around. She gave me an entire bottle of shampoo when I told her I forgot mine, and checked up the next morning to see how my night went. This is a very small, family owned business. It is not a 2 star hotel like Google has it listed, it's several seen-better-days buildings down a very steep dirt road, (my SUV was fine but if you have a sports car or something else low you won't make it) and right next to route 198 and the entrance to the national park. I stayed in cabin 9 with the wraparound deck and the extra bedroom upstairs. These aren't log cabins, they have stucco walls and terra cotta roofs. Mine smelled like Fabuloso immediately, which may be what others are referring to as pesticide. Come on, you all really never smelled Fabuloso? 🤣 As far as the bugs go...... you're in the middle of a forest so there's just gonna be some bugs people. Any cabin along the river is going to have a few that make it in. It's part of the experience. My place had a full kitchen, it wasn't pretty but everything worked and there was coffee. It was fully stocked so someone could cook and serve a whole meal for a large family. Temperatures were in the high 90s to low 100s when I visited, and the 2 air conditioners got the place cooled down quicker than I expected, but still took a bit, so in the meantime, I went to the river and stuck my feet in the cool, crystal clear river. It's the wild west back there, it's not a park so play at your own risk. The bed was great, memory foam mattress, and the shower had super high pressure. It looks like they just fixed it. The satellite receiver was gone so there was no TV, but I didn't care. That's not the point of this place. This isn't lodging so much as an experience. There's no cell service here and the wifi didn't reach my cabin either (it did work 100 ft outside the door though). What's great about this place is you can just hang out on the deck and listen to the river carry away the stresses of home,work,family, etc. When it's dark, the stars are on a whole other level from what we in the coastal big cities see. There's what seems like millions of them really twinkling. I could see clearly the milky way and the dippers without even looking for them. So just chill out, drink some wine, smoke some 🌲, listen to the river and the crickets and just be with the forest. It's the reason we...

I would have been better off sleeping on a damp rock.

I thought the same thing you're probably thinking, I'm not fancy and I'm roughing it in the Sequoias, a rustic cabin will do just fine for me. This is not that. Checking in sketched me out a little because the text I got from the front desk gave me a different address from the website, but it turns out you just have to check in at a horror-movie-general-store first. Fine. But keep in mind then that any issues that come up through the night aren't resolved by a call to the front desk, since there is none. You're on your own in the cabin until the store opens the next day. As soon as we walked in the cabin, my nosehairs were singed off by the smell of bleach. The floor was like an outdoor slick tile kind of thing, adding to the ambiance created by the rest of the room being furnished with wobbly metal patio tables I guess. The smoke detector was ripped out of the ceiling and the tv was unplugged - when we plugged it back in like the problem solvers we are, it didn't work but made a whining noise that escalated in pitch so we unplugged it again before our eardrums exploded. We stayed in March and it was cold, so I'm glad we found the heater for our room - an old space heater with one setting (I guess 2 settings, if you count "off"). There were signs in the room not to drink the tap water, but to drink the bottled water provided instead. There was no bottled water provided. Now for the worst part - the bed. We hiked all day in the 39* Sequoia National Park. I felt like i could have passed out on the hood of our car, I was so exhausted. This. Bed. Though. It felt like a scratchy sheet over another scratchy sheet over a wood frame. I, a girl who falls asleep on wood floors sitting up, could not sleep on this bed. I woke up throughout the night not just uncomfortable but in pain. My back hurt so bad the next day I had to walk hunched over for a couple hours, which puts a real damper on hiking. All this woulda been more tolerable if the staff was understanding, but they weren't. I mentioned the broken stuff in the room the next morning and the guy at checkout said "Yeahhhhh, they're working on that..." "The TV wasn't working either, it was actually ripped out of the wall..." "YEAHHHH THEY'RE WORKING ON THAT." "We didn't have any water or heat" "YEAHHH THEY'RE WORKING ON THAT." "The smoke detector was also ripped out of the wall and there were bare wires dangling down." "YEAHHHH THEY'RE WORKING ON THAT."

Don't stay here. Do an airbnb. We stayed at one 3 blocks away the next night, for the same price...

This place is a scam and a hell hole. We knew immediately that everything looked completely outdated, like a crack house or a scene of a murder documentary. There was only one towel even though they knew there were 4 people, there was no way to get ahold of anyone that had anything to do with the property because no one would answer the phone and there were no human beings around that we could talk to. We turned on the water and it would not get hot, there were cobwebs everywhere, there were dead bugs, and a hole in the wall in the closet with a random sock, there was a greasy chair that looked like it was from a yard sale, there was a broken step on the back that I almost fell on because it was completely wobbly, there was trash and leaves all over the roof, the deck and the yard and it looked like it hadn’t been cleaned up in about a year. It looked like an abandoned property, but to be honest with you and it was 100° inside I couldn’t figure out how to turn on the air conditioner because it was just one of those cheap wall units that look like it was from the 1970s and it was not plugged in, the yellowed cord was just dangling there. There was duct tape covering the entire exterior of the sliding door to hold it closed or to seal it. That is not the kind of thing you want to see at a property that’s almost $300 a night. My kids and my husband and I were also scared and it was during the daytime because it was so dang sketchy and we had paid quite a bit for this stay so I was looking forward to it. I am 100% sure that they have their friends go on and leave for reviews because most of the reviews on this is not accurate. Please do yourself a favor and don’t read any of the positive reviews because they just are not true. Save yourself a headache and find another place to stay. I have never in my life been a high maintenance person and I chose to leave this property and go get a different hotel because I did not feel safe. They still will not give me a refund even though I had to pay for that other hotel so it is a big headache. Unfortunately these scammers need to be reported because the property is unsafe, and they have no sense of...