I walked in at the last minute looking for a room. I was pleasantly suprised by the Surf Motel. I knew it wasn't goint to be a top of the lone hotel. I knew I was checking into an old MOTEL and needed no frills. I was impressed with the updates and was blown away with the free breakfast. The staff was exceptionally helpful and nice. The only improvment would be to get rig of the feather beds. I will definetly stay there again if im in town.

We knew it wasn't going to be the Four Seasons when it's a motel, so our expectations were reasonable, but given the review here, we were left with a bit of a bad taste about the place.

The main bedroom has been updated and painted, and as you can see in my photo, looks plenty nice. They use modern electronic keys which could be easy to lose so be careful about that. The other nice thing was breakfast, it's detailed on their website and wasn't bad for a continental breakfast. The owner is certainly pleasant to deal with and friendly.

Whomever tried to renovate this old motel really was lazy about it. The kitchenette has the old cabinets, the fridge had both doors installed on the wrong side so you can barely open them. They cover the oven sheets in foil, but don't leave you any foil to use yourself for cooking (and frankly I don't know how old that foil is on there already, so I'd want to put NEW foil on before cooking on it.) That brings me to the other thing - they include plates, silverware, cookware, etc., but it's just hand-washed by previous guests. That's pretty disgusting. I know they don't clean it themselves, because they admonish you to clean up your own dishes or be charged $20 an hour if they have to touch it.

That was very off-putting, so I had to hand-wash everything we used TWICE, once before we used it, and then afterwards so I avoided the charge. But how to dry these plates? Toilet paper I guess. There was no paper towels or napkins anywhere. A serious oversight here. We need paper goods when cooking. How much would that cost - a roll of paper towels per week.... seriously..

Back to the lazy updating, they had clearly repainted everything, but the hinges on the bathroom door were SO unbelievable rusty that there was a 1-inch rust haze around each hinge. And the bathroom... sigh. The faucets must have been 30 years old. How much is a new faucet for an updated motel? $20?

The carpet was filthy - my wife wore socks on it for five minutes and they were disgustingly black. We had to lay the bathroom towels on the floor just to walk around and not ruin our feet or socks.

Finally, the beds. They talked about how they had "European feather beds" on them, but it's obvious they are just trying to avoid buying new mattresses for this old place. They weren't comfortable, they lumped in the center so you either slept right in the middle on them or you were rolled off the bed basically.

The good thing about this place is that it's right on the water, so we walked to the edge at sunset and enjoyed a nice moment there.

There are two grocery stores within easy walking distance, which is a relief for this small town with no real restaurants to speak of.

Booked this as a one night stopover on the way back to San Francisco airport and wished we had more time. The location is great with cliff top views of the sea and sunset and easy access to a short cliff top walk. The breakfast was way above average with a pleasant seating area outside as well as inside. The reception staff were extremely pleasant and helpful. Externally the motel has plants and flowers with accompanying hummingbirds as well as attractive decorations with a seaside theme. The rooms were quite small and ours was a bit dark but the bed was very comfortable and there was a fridge and microwave in a large wardrobe in the quite spacious bathroom (sounds odd but it was a reasonable arrangement). There were plenty of good places to eat within walking distance (Bones Roadhouse did a good lunch!) and liked Gualala very much especially Gualala Point State Park. Overall enjoyed our stay a lot.

Though this was a motel found unit to be smaller than anticipated but clean with a feather bed! We enjoyed the bluff walk before breakfast. Sea otters entertained us and we were close enough to take pictures of them. Breakfast was a surprise with waffles made to order, yogurt, cereal, coffee, etc. Good value for the money considering that prices are almost double for other places in the area.