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West Virginia Trips: Hatfield & McCoy Trails
Even though my non-husband XFE and I are fully vaccinated, we have still held off on traveling. Which, if you’ve read this blog before, you know it’s a big, big change for us. And, as the COVID breakthrough cases went up over the summer, and news of ICUs being full and hospitals overwhelmed, we wanted…
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What is the Deal with Toilets: A Reluctant Buyer’s Guide
Over the past year at the corona cabin, we’ve been making quite a few updates and changes to our little chocolate box. We gave the front porch a refresh, replacing the old-fashioned wood balusters with a cool wire system and painting the door and railings black. We swapped in new appliances throughout the house, including…
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West Virginia Day Trips: Blackwater Falls & Canaan Valley
Our corona cabin in Hardy County is surrounded by lots of great hiking. We’ve got, of course, all the trails at the Lost River State Park, the Wolf Gap Recreation Area and the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests. Plus, we have our own five acres to tromp around on. But one of our favorite…
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Where to Eat in West Virginia: Farmer’s Daughter
Crazy but true: We’ve been here at our West Virginia corona cabin for a year now. And it has been great. A real respite from our hectic city lives. But the fact is, we don’t get out much. We are pretty isolated, and due to COVID, we have not gone to many restaurants, bars, or…
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Lot’s to Love About Lost River
We appear to have won the battle of the carpenter bees and are now settling into full spring at the cabin. Which, while carpenter bee-free, is not at all bug free. In fact, it is very, very buggy. But that’s what you get when you plunk a cabin in the middle of five acres of…
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A Few Lessons From Living in the Country
There are a few things no one tells you about living in the country If you live at the top of a mountain—even a small one—it will be very, very windy a lot of the time. Get used to the sounds of gunfire. Even if it’s not hunting season. At first I thought there must…
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Part 2: Holy crap. We bought a cabin.
Picking up where I left off: By September, we were getting pretty frustrated with the whole “let’s buy a vacation cabin” experience. When we began looking in June, we had visions of spending late summer all settled in the country. After all, our rowhouse in Old Town was literally the first house we looked at…
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Part 1: Holy crap. We bought a cabin.
Hello from the other side, my fellow vaxxed and inoculated pandemic people. We made it. I mean, we’ve still got a ways to go to make sure we reach herd immunity, but there seems to be a very dim light at the end of this long, crap tunnel of death and illness and isolation. We…
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Reality TV Time: Escape to the Country
If you are a reasonably cautious person, you are now well into your fifth month of quarantine/self-isolation/stay-at-home/work-from-home-ness. Congratulations on caring not only for your own health, but for your community as a whole. I’m sure, like most of us, you are hankering for a getaway. Maybe a trip abroad (HA!). Or, slightly more realistically, someplace…
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Vacationing During the Pandemic
July is traditionally when we take our annual “fly-and-flop” vacation. We usually go somewhere south of the equator (usually an all-inclusive) and lounge around a pool or beach with lots of books and sweet, frozen drinks in hand. We eat lots of salty, buttery seafood with our fingers and wash it down with crisp, cold…