The Stanley hot springs trip: where to put your group

If you want three bedrooms in Stanley and you're planning your days around the hot springs, the answer from our side of the fence is short: Stanley Spacious Home, a log cabin with three bedrooms, two and a half baths, and a dining table that seats ten. It's the only three-bedroom house we manage in Stanley. Our other Stanley home, Sawtooth Sunsets, has four bedrooms and sleeps six, which makes it a different animal entirely, and worth understanding before you decide the bedroom count is what you're actually shopping for.

Three bedrooms, ten people, one long table

The cabin's floor plan does something unusual for a three-bedroom: it spreads a big group across the house without stacking everyone into one room. The lower level has a king bedroom and a full bath with a tub-shower, plus a den off the kitchen with a queen bed and picture windows, which is where the teenagers inevitably end up. Upstairs, the primary has a Tempur-Pedic king, a twin for a toddler, and an ensuite with a shower. Down the hall, a guest room with a Tempur-Pedic queen, a bunk above it, and a desk tucked underneath, with its own powder room.

The main room is built around a floor-to-ceiling river rock fireplace, wood-burning, with windows wrapping the family room and dining area so the Sawtooths are in the frame while you eat. The kitchen has a breakfast bar, two sinks, a range and oven, and cookware for a group that intends to cook rather than eat out, which in Stanley is a practical consideration: the town has a handful of restaurants, not a dining scene.

A small stream runs through the property. Outside there's a deck, a BBQ, and a long table with benches. Cell service is patchy out there, but the wifi works, so plan on messaging rather than calling.

Why the four-bedroom house sleeps fewer people

Sawtooth Sunsets has one more bedroom and four fewer beds. Four bedrooms, four bathrooms, six guests. It's a single-family residence in town rather than a cabin out of it, built around two king suites, a room with twin beds and a trundle, and a fourth bedroom with a full bed and a workspace. The upper level is vaulted and glassed, with a Wolf kitchen and an island, and the main-level suite has a soaking tub positioned to look at the mountains.

So the choice isn't really three bedrooms versus four. It's capacity versus comfort per head:

• Stanley Spacious Home: 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, sleeps 10. A log cabin, roughly a quarter-hour from downtown Stanley and Mountain Village, five minutes from Stanley Lake. Wood-burning fireplace, big shared table, patio and grill, washer and dryer in the house.
• Sawtooth Sunsets: 4 bedrooms, 4 baths, sleeps 6. Walking distance to downtown Stanley. Downstairs living area with ping pong, a fitness room with a Peloton and rowing machine, air conditioning, garage and driveway parking. The indoor fireplace isn't available for guest use.

Two families with kids: the cabin. Three or four adults who each want their own bathroom and a short walk to breakfast at Stanley Baking Co.: the house in town, even though it means paying for a fourth bedroom you may not fill.

Where the soaking actually is

Stanley is one of the few towns in the West where you can plan an entire week around free, undeveloped hot springs, and the good ones are strung along two highways out of town.

Valley Creek Hot Springs sits right in town near Mountain Village, a few minutes' drive and free. Boat Box, a single metal tub perched above the Salmon River on Highway 75, is a short run east, maybe five minutes. Keep going on the same road and you reach Cove Creek, sometimes called Basin Creek, then Sunbeam, the roadside pools about fifteen minutes out of town that most first-timers end up at. Sunbeam has free riverside pools and soaking tubs set against the Salmon.

Head west on Highway 21 toward Boise and the trip gets longer: Bonneville is roughly three quarters of an hour out, Kirkham a bit past it at about an hour, Pine Flats further still. Challis, northeast, is a pool-style soak and a ninety-minute drive, which makes it a day rather than an evening. Easley, toward Sun Valley, is under an hour south.

The practical point for choosing a house: almost all of this is roadside, river-adjacent, and done in wet swimsuits. Which is why I'd push a soaking-heavy group toward the cabin. It has its own washer and dryer, a laundromat nearby, a real fireplace to hang things in front of, and a covered spot to dump ten pairs of wet shoes that isn't the living room floor.

If the trip is really about Redfish Lake

Same answer, different reasoning. Redfish Lake is where most Stanley visitors spend their best day: the marina sits in front of the lodge, there's a beach, and Limbert's at the lodge cooks a Northwest menu from mid-May into October, with the Lakeside Grill doing burgers, fish tacos and soft serve for anyone who's been in the water all afternoon.

For a lake day with a crowd, the cabin wins on logistics rather than location. Ten people, a kitchen that can produce a cooler's worth of lunch before you leave, a grill and an outdoor table for when you get back sunburned and starving, and the dark skies that come with being outside of town. Stanley sits in a dark sky reserve, and the cabin's deck is a genuinely good place to be at eleven at night.

Sawtooth Sunsets puts you closer to the Salmon and to town, and the second living area with ping pong gets used on the afternoon the wind comes up. But six is six. If your group is nine or ten, the conversation ends there.

Two things to settle before you book

Neither Stanley home takes pets, and both are strict about it: no guests' animals, no visitors' animals. The cabin's owners have allergies. If you're travelling with a dog, Stanley isn't where we can help you.

The other is seasonal. Winter in the Sawtooth valley means four-wheel drive or snow-rated tires, and the things that make a summer trip (the lodge restaurants, the marina) run on a season that closes in October. Wildlife wanders through town year-round. Call a reservation specialist with your dates and we'll tell you what's open, what the roads are doing, and whether the house you want is free, and we'll book it directly rather than through a platform.

MVP Vacation Homes manages homes across Idaho's mountain towns, Sun Valley, McCall, Tamarack and Stanley, with direct booking, local recommendations and 24/7 guest support. If Stanley is full for your week, Ketchum and Sun Valley are a scenic drive south over Galena Summit, roughly an hour and a quarter on Highway 75, and we have more houses there.