How many hotels can you point to that give you access to an indoor waterpark and access to a ski resort? At Morning Star Lodge in Kellogg, Idaho, you get both right on the property. This town is only about 75 miles from Spokane, so it’s an easy getaway from there or an easy ski trip from the airport. It’s even closer to Coeur d’Alene.
We don’t normally start off a hotel review with a photo of a gondola. We are this time because you can walk out of your room at Morning Star Lodge and board that gondola to ride up to the mountain and go skiing. It’s literally steps from your room on one end, steps to the slopes on the other.
Silver Mountain is no slouch either when it comes to skiing. I spent a day swishing down the slopes on my trip when I went skiing the Idaho Panhandle and I had a couple of guys with me who were true experts. All of us really enjoyed our day on the mountain there, finding plenty of challenging terrain and long cruising slopes.
If you wear out your muscles doing that, you can change from ski clothes to a bathing suit and make your way over to the largest indoor water park in Idaho: Silver Rapids. If you have kids along they’ll love the fun water playground, but if not you can soak in a big hot tub with a drink from the bar in hand. Or you can learn to surf or boogie board on the indoor waves.
If you are adults who don’t want to hang out with all the kids in the water park, however, the lodging complex does have a few of its own hot tubs you can use as a hotel amenity. They’re in two spots: on a terrace and on a rooftop.
There are a few other diversions in this hotel and gondola park retail complex, such as a bar, a coffee shop, a frozen yogurt place, and two restaurants. There is also a good brewpub where we ate dinner that’s a short drive away: Radio Brewing Company.
Apart from the main lobby, each individual building/wing has its own lobby area where you can spread out and relax outside of your room. These have comfortable sofas and a gas fireplace to make the space cozy.
The hotel itself doesn’t have a restaurant since there’s so much else just outside the doors, but also because most the rooms here all have a kitchen. Instead of being a regular hotel, Morning Star Lodge is actually a collection of individually owned condos.
So you can book a room through the ski resort and through Booking.com, but you’ll also find places for rent on Airbnb. Just check the terms as individual rentals might not include the water park admission.
The rooms aren’t all that large unless you get a suite with a separate living room, but most have a balcony with a couple of chairs to provide an additional place to sit. They contain the usual hotel amenities, plus the kitchenette that covers the basics.
The most attractive unit option is the one-bedroom loft condo layout. This one has high ceilings to accommodate a bedroom at the top of a spiral staircase and it has a nice fireplace anchoring the living room. Family studios and one-bedroom studios have a sofa that folds out into a bed for the kids.
The owner-condo rental pool arrangement impacts the kind of service you can expect, which is as inconsistent as the owners probably are. The lobby has coffee and tea available all day, which is nice, but when problems crop up in the units, the front desk staffers don’t have much knowledge or power to fix them.
There’s also a surprising lack of signage to even get you to the water park. Otherwise though, our one-night stay was trouble-free, quiet, and comfortable.
If you stay here longer, there are regular activities around the complex, such as fireside games and marshmallow roasting in the winter by the gas fire pits.
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Rates start at around $120 double for just a room, but go up to $51 to $100 per person for packages that include the waterpark or ski passes. The best per-person deals are the family suites for four. Book direct at the Silver Mountain site, where they are often running package specials that combine skiing in winter, along with the water park in all seasons. Or you can check rates at Booking.com.
Review and photos by editor Tim Leffel, who was hosted at Morning Star Lodge and Silver Mountain while researching a ski article for another publication. As always, all opinions are his own.
