Balanced Rock Inn — Hotel in Fruita

The worst feeling of having to spend a night where you can’t feel that you can trust that things have been cleaned…. Ughh. I wanted to love it. I picked it for the reviews which seemed decent. My main concern when it comes to hotels is cleanliness and safety. Other things don’t really rise to the level of complain unless they’re terrible. Anyways, when I arrived, a woman who was outside came up to me and offered to check me in and pointed me to the office door. She seemed friendly and explained where my room was. (FYI, there are stairs and no elevator if that is a concern.) The rooms have codes to enter. When I opened the door and found the light, I was pleasantly surprised. The room setup is nice and cozy with a modern look. I set my things down and explored a bit, and generally the place seems clean and smelled nice. However, when I washed my hands I used the drying towel which got some pet hair on my hands. Gross, but I wasn’t too phased as it seemed clean overall…. But then I began to discover the floor felt dirty, then as I was wiping my face clean, I got pet hairs on my face. My experience just got worse because then I really took a look at the floor, bedding and everywhere else and sure enough, pet hairs were everywhere. They were a bit camouflaged, but they were plentiful and it was disgusting. Initially I assumed just a couple could have been missed but no…. It looked like the floor had not been cleaned. Ew… in addition, I have to also note that the coffee maker was kinda gross, with white flakes and I didn’t trust it enough to use it. Plus there was some splatter on the shower curtains which led me to question if it had been newly replaced since the previous guest. Also, the tv didn’t turn on either. I could have experienced worse I suppose but I would have felt safer in terms of cleanliness in another place. I survived but I was also somewhat concerned they might try to assess those “pet fees” to me from the mess the last guest left behind. So, I stopped by the office…. Apparently it was off hours… I. Allows the number twice then left a message explaining my concern. I’ll give it some time and see if they get back to me.

Overall, if your hope is cleanliness and safely it scores like maybe 50%, which is a fail any way you look it.

Update: they got back… after I left a review. She kept saying she wished I had talked to them first. Well, I did try. Multiple times & left a message. No response until I leave a review. She said she’d discount the stay & while I appreciate the gesture, she kept telling me this was not a usual experience, and she doesn’t know why or how this happened… but I would have appreciated a sincere apology rather than excuses. And communication earlier rather than having to leave a review to...

Don’t believe the reviews, they are NOT accurate. Our room was NOT a room that has been remodeled. ||||There were very few people staying at this motel. So, what do they do? They put us all right next to each other. WTF? Why not put a room between us, especially when you have paper thin walls (I can hear my neighbor pee).||||On the day of arrival we received an Info email. Bfast is 7 am - 10 am. However, when we showed up at 9.10 am, the door was closed/locked and the sign said bfast was from 7 - 9 am. Again, WTF? The email we received less than 24 hours earlier was wrong.||||Bfast items were better than expected. Strong coffee.||||Strong WiFi.||||Owner has a big dog that goes apeshit barking when it sees someone (it looks out a window), so hope you don’t get assigned a room near the office. Hotel also allows dogs, so we heard at least 2 other dogs barking, including in the middle of the night. I originally didn’t hear a dog barking in the middle of the night, but neighbor must have, and tossed and turned in his squeaky bed, then walked around a bit, which of course woke me up.||||Bed is a DOUBLE, NOT queen sized bed. Lumpy mattress and squeaky, and the whole set up jiggled when one of us moved.||||Room isn’t very clean…dust on bedside tables, floor hasn’t been swept/vacuumed in a while due to debris/hair on the wood floor. There’s also yellow (pee?) stains on bathroom floor board.||||Room heating unit cranks out heat. So much so, we had to turn it off. It would have been nice to have a constant white noise to block out...

I came here for a couple of main reasons: price, location, and positive reviews. I didn’t have expectations of a five star hotel with all the perks but just a clean quiet comfortable room to sleep in.

Check in was super easy and I had the code to the room before 3pm so when I got there around 8:30 I could just walk up and go in the room.

The room was clean and the towels were soft and fluffy as I read in other reviews.

For the most part it hit on my needs but I can’t say I agree with the quiet or comfortable part of what I was hoping for. The bed was quite honestly one of the most uncomfortable beds I’ve ever experienced. There was a soft top but you could feel every single spring in the mattress below it which just felt like a super stiff unyielding layer of unforgiving hardness. I spent most of the night tossing and turning. To add to that, the air conditioner unit would kick on (mind you, to keep it at 75 degrees when it was 45 outside, so it’s not like I was pushing it. But when it kicked on it woke both of us up. Sleeping without it meant leaving the window open and hearing all the trucks on I-70 and the train whistles. So I woke up sore and unrested and even though the rate was reasonable for hotels in the area, I felt like I got a poor value for how my body felt after staying there.

With an updated mattress and AC unit (the current ones are at least 30 years old) this could be a great hotel. Or even just a window on the rear of the room that...