You know, I read the reviews before going, and I must say, .... please! Having a key vs. a card key is not a big deal! We thought it was clean and quiet. Directly across the street there is a grassy area with bench-type seating to listen to the story while watching the laser light show. Fun! The room was fine, restaurants close by and there's a grocery store next door. The pool was small, but clean and so was the jacuzzi. You can view the dam while lounging by the pool. The office has a gift shop and coffee, tea, and oatmeal available.

Coulee House is older and does have it's quirks, but it is the only place we stay when we go to The Grand Coulee Dam. We go there 2 or 3 times a year, during the summer.

There are a few different style rooms to choose from. There is a regular plain room, with no view. There are balcony rooms. The balconies all face the dam, and are extremely small, with only room for one chair, so viewing the dam show from a balcony is tough if you have one person who wants to see it. There is also a studio type room that has a kitchen in it.

The hotel is within walking distance of the dam show viewing area, a grocery/drug store, a casino and the R & A Cafe (which is a must for breakfast.). You will need to drive if you want to get to the elevators for the tour of the dam, and the visitor's center is walkable, but in the summer heat a short drive might be better.

There are two hotels at Grand Coulee, the other seems newer and may be more desireable to some. We have never stayed there and probably never will. The Coulee House has become our regular hotel, and we will stay there again.

We made reservations late for Memorial Day weekend, so of course everything else was booked. We decided it would be fun to stay in a quaint small town hotel. But from the moment we pulled up to check in, I could see it was a dump. Paint was peeling and gutters were hanging off. My husband came back from checking in with an actual KEY to let us into the room. We opened the door to our room and it was apparent that although they spent some money recently on furnishings, they haven't spent a lot of money on property upkeep OR the cleaning staff. The bathroom was downright disgusting and on every door there were dirty water drip marks from the doorknob to the floor. The ancient shower was difficult to turn on and leaked cold water down the shower wall, obviously leaking behind the fixtures as well. I wondered if I could finish my shower before I fell through the rotted floor and I was wishing like hell I had some flip flops to shower in. There were some very DIY-looking drywall patches all through the room. After checking in we left and arrived back around 11:30PM, to find there were no available parking spots. We were told we'd have a "view of the Dam"....exactly. The ONLY window in the place was the sliding glass door, so small you could only get through one at a time (which was good, because only one person could fit on the "balcony", furnished with a cheap white plastic chair.) The "pool" was locked with a padlock, about half the size of my backyard deck, and had a handwritten sign taped on the gate: "No Pool Towels. Use room towels." Also, this property apparently borders a hot one-horse-town night spot, as we were kept awake until 3 in the morning by loud druken shouts and loud engines. We checked out early in the morning and did not stay the second night.

Checked in, quickly dropped off bags and some groceries, and headed to the conveniently-located casino across the street. We should have taken the time to inspect the room and request a proper cleaning at check-in time. Upon returning to the room later that night, we noticed that the floor outside and in the bathroom had dried muddy boot prints and had some light sand/gravel tracked in from outside (probably from ice/snow treatments on ground outside). Not a place one would feel comfortable going barefoot in. The shower tub was covered with this sand/gravel, and dirt had pooled and dried on bottom of tub and up & over the side. In the interest of resolving the situation the quickest way (the office was closed by then - it was after 9 pm), we cleaned the bathroom ourselves so that we felt we could enter without wearing flip-flops or something else to keep our feet clean. There were some small, dark hairs on the sheets of the bed, but it was late and we brushed them off to get some sleep. Too late to do anything about it. So far, no sign of bed bugs. TV had no remote - something not consistent with a place that charges over $110 dollars per night during peak season ($71.00 off-season for this king bed room.) This hotel is old and shows it. We don't mind that at all if a place is clean and the rates reflect the depreciation. See other reviews for some positive comments about this place we would agree with, but an experience with dirty conditions like this can make the difference between a good time and a bad one. So with this review, I am focusing on the negative. Next time we will try the Columbia River Inn just across the bridge, where we can still view the dam and walk to the casino. The rates look lower, and it looks like it has been more recently updated.