The White Horse Inn and Saloon LLC — Restaurant in Spirit Lake

I rented a room with a friend for 5 nights while we were in town. Overall we have enjoyed the experience. Here is a breakdown of our experience.

Room: There are two room options at the White Horse: single bed with a private bathroom, single bed with a shared bathroom. We went with the shared bathroom to save some money since we are staying so long, but as it was the off season we are the only guests. So really the bathroom is only shared between us, but we have to walk down the hall. Our room is small, just enough room to have a soft queen sized bed full of both soft and firm pillows. There is one small folding table with a 4 cup coffee maker and fixings. There are two outlets in the room: one beneath the headboard and one on the other side of the room. The outlet under the bed is a two prong (great for a LONG phone charger), the one across the room is a 3 prong. I recommend bringing a power strip if you have more than one device to charge. The paint is fairly new, the bedding in good condition. The room is clean. Definitely better accommodations than the last time I stayed in a motel 6 shudders. This is an old building, so we have had some 8 legged squatters in our room, but other than that no issues. Our first night was super cold and the heater in the room was not turned on prior to our arrival. This made for a very cold first night. Since then the room has stayed at a fairly reasonably comfortable temperature.

Bathrooms: There are two bathrooms on our floor. One bathroom has a shower big enough for 3, the other has a shower big enough for 2. The towels are soft and in good condition. The bathrooms stayed well stocked during our entire visit and were cleaned daily. We had a problem with the hot water heater the first night, but realistically speaking it was below zero at the time I tried to use the hot water. Man it’s cold in Idaho!! The hotel provided plenty of toiletries, towels, and when asked even provided dark towels as my freshly tinted red hair is still bleeding a bit.

Customer Service: Everyone has been fantastic. The employees we have interacted with have all been wonderful, chatty, and helpful.

Suggestions for improvement: While our stay has been pleasant, there are a couple of things that could be improved upon. Our heater not getting turned on prior to our pre-booked arrival was a problem the first night. I have a medical condition that was affected by the extreme cold. The space heater in the room takes up a lot of space and really wasn’t helping enough that first day. Changing to the small fireplace style space heaters would be an esthetic improvement and heat up the room quite nicely. The lack of power outlets is also annoying, but adding in more power in such an old building would be cost prohibitive. One of the biggest suggestions I could make though is an after hours number. We had a situation that we felt we needed to contact a member off staff in the middle of the night. After the bar closes downstairs, there were no staff members on site and no way to contact anyone for help.

Haunting: We heard from multiple locals that the White Horse Hotel is haunted. The story as we have heard it is that there was a maid working in the bordello that used to be in this hotel. As she was cleaning the front rooms on floor two she sees her son run out into the road and get run over by a horse and buggy. The trauma of his death was too much and she killed herself by jumping from one of the windows. We have heard stories of her antics as a jokester, but didn’t expect to experience anything. One night during our stay we heard one of the fire alarms beep once like the battery was dying. After a few minutes of no other beeps the alarm starts going off. We locate the specific alarm, which was down the hall away from our room and the bathroom. As soon as both of us stood underneath the alarm and acknowledged that this is in fact the alarm that’s going off the alarm stopped. It’s been over 24 hours now and we haven’t heard a single...

TLDR: cozy, quiet, budget friendly, updated, private and shared bathrooms, possibly haunted.

We picked Silverwood for our family vacation this year. The obvious choice was to stay at a hotel in Coeur d’Alene. However, due to the fact that we would really only be in the room to sleep and shower, we decided to look for a more budget friendly hotel.

We are big on cost to value and boy does White Horse hotel deliver. This hotel cut our hotel budget by 2/3 of what we were looking at in the big city and this hotel is much nicer! It’s not fancy by any means, but when I say nicer, I mean it had a more personal touch and experience. The towels aren’t that industrial scratchy white, they were a coal grey color to match the updated bathrooms, and so soft. No scratch single ply tp. The bedding was probably my favorite part. The sheets and blankets were so very soft. I had such a good sleep after a very long day at the theme park. The beds were fine. It’s starting to slouch on the middle so might need to be replaced soon. But that’s okay, you can just snuggle with your hunny. Although the units were only equipped with window AC units, they got the job done. We booked two rooms. 10 and 11 because they can be conjoined which was what we wanted for our family. We did get to see many of the other rooms and they are lovely and cozy as well (see pics).

This is a very old building and the new owners are working on updating the rooms and bathrooms. But keep in mind that most of the rooms do not have their own private bathroom, they have a shared bathroom. The bathrooms are really nice and updated though.

Like every hotel I’ve ever stayed at, this one is by no means perfect but there are a couple of reasons this hotel might not be right for you….

1. there is not an elevator at all. It’s three floors and it’s all stairs. If you have trouble with stairs or mobility issues that require an elevator, this isn’t the place for you.
2. You are not a fan of the paranormal. Yeah, it’s haunted. It’s an old building so of course it is. We fortunately (unfortunately?) did not get a visit from Big Girl (Mama Jo). But if you book a room on the second floor, you may have a better chance at an encounter.

I can’t speak much to the staff here as the only interaction we really had was with the General Manager Kendall. He was very kind and happy to show us around and up to our room. He even left us with his personal cell phone number in case we needed anything during off hours.

There is a bar connected to the hotel, but it’s separate by a jail cell looking wall. Don’t worry, you won’t be kept up all night by bar patrons or anything of the like, we hardly ever saw anyone during our stay here, let alone bar patrons. Overall our stay was great.

For the price we paid, we got 10 times the value we expected! We will always come back here any time we’re visiting this area. I hope you give it a try and that you also love and appreciate the rich history of the building/area as well as the...

We made a last minute reservation over the phone, and received instant confirmation via text, including a contract to sign using our mobile phones, and the key code to enter the hotel section. The price was very reasonable||||As advertised, it is a private room with a shared bathroom, though I don’t recall having much interaction with other guests while there for the night. Toiletries were provided in the room, along with clean linens and an A/C window unit. No TV, fridge, or microwave, but that was all expected.||||The internet speed was fairly abysmal - I’m not sure if that was a fluke, but this seems like an easy enough thing to fix with some repeaters on every floor. Especially in a smaller town in Idaho, cell phone reception is a bit of a problem and so having Wi-Fi is helpful for travelers planning their stay and getting to unwind a bit.||||Perhaps the hardest thing for us was that towels were not readily available. I think it would have been nice that along with toiletries, a set of towels be made available inside the room, rather than having to rely on a set of towels in the shared bathroom. We did text about it, and got an instant response saying that 10am was usually when towels were replenished. We were getting an early start and requested towels earlier. In the end, we opted not to shower there and instead made our way to our next stop on our road trip.||||I still think this is a nice place to stay and getting to try out the bar post-pandemic would be a great experience. If the internet and towels issue were fixed, I’d consider staying...