Getaways
This Treehouse in the Mountains Will Ruin Every Hotel for You
A hand-crafted tiny-home treehouse outside Banks, Idaho, where a tree called Mondo Pondo passes through the living space, offers a quiet weekend reset among old-growth pines.
BOISE, ID—About an hour northwest of Boise, past the Payette River canyon and the small community of Banks, there’s a one-bedroom treehouse where a full-grown Ponderosa pine named Mondo Pondo grows straight through the middle of the living space. The property took its builder two and a half years to complete.
The result is a tiny-home-style structure with a private bath, natural light, a Polk Bluetooth sound system, exercise equipment, and an outdoor dining area. The tree isn’t a decorative motif or a painted mural—it’s an actual tree, intersecting the room where you’d otherwise expect a wall to be.
Depending on your disposition, this will either feel like the whole point or a minor logistical curiosity. The stay is sized for two people and pitched, reasonably, toward couples looking for a weekend that has some genuine quiet in it.
Banks sits along the South Fork Payette River, a stretch of water known in Idaho for whitewater and fishing. The listing doesn’t promise proximity to anything specific, so think of the surrounding area as general mountain Idaho: forested, unhurried, and not particularly demanding of an itinerary.
The setup is practical as well, with smart-lock check-in noted in the listing.
There’s a security camera covering the parking area and entrance, and the host asks guests to wash their dishes and send a message on departure, which is a reasonable ask. What to pack mentally: an acceptance that the space is small by design, and that the tree growing through it is the feature, not a quirk to work around.
What to pack literally: groceries, since Banks is not a destination with a lot of dining infrastructure, and the property includes a full kitchen. The outdoor dining area suggests that at least some of the meals are meant to happen outside, which, in the pines, is a reasonable ambition.
This is the kind of trip that works best when the goal is genuinely nothing—no scheduled hikes, no must-see list, just a night or two somewhere that doesn’t look like home. The treehouse format helps with that.
It’s hard to doomscroll for very long when a large conifer is growing through your living room. Pricing varies by date.
Check the Airbnb listing for current availability, rates, and cancellation policy before booking.