After exploring some options, we began converting the 2 bedroom home into a Bed & Breakfast.  We started by taking one of the bedrooms and added an ensuite bathroom making it a queen bed and twin bed room – Beryl’s Room.  We developed our own basic website, and, hence, Smoky Bear Ranch Bed & Breakfast was born.

Each year thereafter, we did our own remodeling and added additional rooms.  We converted the master bedroom into a 2 queen bed suite – the Apgar Suite – which already had it’s own ensuite bathroom.

The office was then converted into our economy room – the Cedar Room – with a full size bed and no bathroom.  We learned from this people preferred an ensuite bathroom.  So the following year we partitioned off part of the living room to make 2 bathrooms and converted the rest of the living room into a queen bed room – the Pine Room.  One of these bathrooms became an ensuite bathroom for the Cedar Room and the other one an ensuite bathroom for the Pine Room.

After a couple of years, with Beryl’s Room behind the kitchen, we decided it wasn’t functional to have guests walking through the kitchen to access their room and so we stopped renting out Beryl’s Room and we moved into it.

Talking with people looking for lodging options, we learned many folks were looking for a self contained cabin.  We explored options of being the agent and renting cabins others owned and did that for a couple of years before we decided to build our own cabins.

There were a few smaller cabins for rent in the area but no larger cabins at that time.  So in 2002 we embarked on building our Grizzly Cabin – a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom, full kitchen, 1500 square foot cabin.  This was a very popular cabin but there were families looking for smaller self contained cabins.

In 2006, we built the Little Bear Cabin – a 500 square foot cabin with kitchenette and loft bedroom containing a queen bed and 2 twin beds.  The following year, 2007, we added a second small cabin, the Little Griz Cabin with the same amenities as the Little Bear Cabin.

After sleeping wherever there was a place to put a queen bed and sharing living space with Scott’s wood shop for the last 29 years, we decided in 2022 to add private living quarters – a master bedroom, master bathroom, and living room – plus do some remodeling converting Beryl’s Room into a larger, more functional kitchen for the Bed & Breakfast and making a more functional common area for our guests.