Tour Highlights Coeur D’Alene’s Sleepy Side Bed And Breakfasts Get Spruced Up For Today’s 6th Annual Event

Bed and breakfast kitchens filled up with baked goods and vacuums made the carpet rounds Saturday.

Pine bough garlands and poinsettias graced banisters and doorways, ready to welcome visitors today on the 6th annual Coeur d’Alene Bed and Breakfast Tour.

“This is probably the most exciting time for me,” said Coeur d’Alene Bed and Breakfast proprietor Luise Robertson. “We have quiche and cake and cookies. We have four guests and we have to clean around them constantly, but they’re good sports.”

Since Cricket on the Hearth, the city’s first bed and breakfast, opened 13 years ago, Coeur d’Alene’s community of homey accommodations has steadily grown.

Now, the city and surrounding area has about 25 bed and breakfasts. Five years ago, there were only about a dozen.

While some bed and breakfast owners worry that the market may be reaching the saturation point, others adopt the “more the merrier” attitude.

If the city becomes known for having a wide variety of B&Bs, Coeur d’Alene will draw vacationers looking for that kind of experience.

“I’m European, and I bring a European flavor into the bed and breakfast business,” said Robertson, who turned the former Archie Nelson mansion into a bed and breakfast seven years ago. “We’re all very different.”

For instance, the Baragar House in the Fort Grounds neighborhood is the home where Carolyn Baragar raised two children. However, she said she had always planned to open a bed and breakfast.

“I use to take in college students,” Baragar said Saturday, surrounded in her dining room with tubs of cookies and Rice Crispies bars. “I figured if I could handle college students, I could handle paying guests.”

For Baragar, the busiest time is during summer’s warm months, when guests can conveniently walk to the beach and sun themselves.

Running a B&B is not as profitable as she originally thought it would be. Multiple sets of high-quality sheets and other niceties for guest rooms are costly, as well as advertising to the vacation crowd.

“You’re selling sleep, so you want it to be very nice. … It’s not a money-making venture,” she said. “It’s a wonderful people gain. I’ve met people from all over the world.”

Sue Fall, who runs Someday House in Kidd Island Bay, agreed.

“You don’t go into this business to support yourself. It’s supplemental income, because you pretty much have the summer season,” said Fall, who turned the hillside home her husband built into a small B&B after his death more than five years ago.

“I wanted to provide a safe, quiet and calm place for people to come and rejuvenate and then go back out and attack the world,” she said between preparing hors d’oeurves for the tour.

The biggest bed and breakfast in town, The Blackwell House, is for sale. Owner Kathy Sims isn’t selling because of lack of business, but rather for the opposite reason, said manager Margaret Hoy.

“She says it’s a hobby run amok,” Hoy said.

The free tour of a dozen bed and breakfasts ushers in the leanest season for their owners.

Innkeepers started the annual tour to thank neighbors for their support and to advertise the homes to the community. Locals might choose a bed and breakfast for a weekend of relaxation, a special occasion or for putting up their relatives, innkeepers said.

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: B&B TOUR Today’s tour includes: Coeur d’Alene Bed & Breakfast, Cricket on the Hearth, the Baragar House, Someday House, Amor’s Highland House, The Blackwell House, Katie’s Wild Rose Inn, The Roosevelt Inn, the Hitching Post Manor in Hayden Lake, O’Neil’s Bed and Breakfast, Wolf Lodge Creek Bed and Breakfast and Gregory’s McFarland House. Each bed and breakfast has a map for the rest of the tour.