weekend recap [west virginia]

D and I took a little weekend getaway in West Virginia, and I wanted to share some of it with you. I expected a relaxing few days by the pool, but was pleasantly surprised by how much variety we had. We were supposed to go in April as part of a LivingSocial deal, but the weekend we booked was superseded by accepted students weekend at Duke, so we had to reschedule and use our credit.

We stayed at the Guest House at Lost River, which I would highly recommend. We stayed in a room like a tree-house, with beautiful views and log-cabin walls. It actually smelled exactly like the cottage my family used to own up in Canada, just an amazing and memory-filled musty scent of summer.

There was a lovely pool, an indoor and outdoor jacuzzi, a wonderful restaurant and bar (we went Saturday night), and a full hot breakfast included every morning. I really loved the grounds- I don't have a good word for it, but it's very piece-y? You can kindof see it in the above picture, just many separate but complimentary buildings and areas and nooks. So cozy.


The views were just incredible. We couldn't get over the fact that at this point, we were only an hour from DC. After tastings, we'd get a glass (or bottle) of our favorite and walk around the vineyards, very peaceful afternoon for sure.

Check out those hills. D and I had a serious discussion on whether or not we could run a vineyard on our own, and we're thinking it may be an encore career. It was so idyllic.

D cried a bit because the wine was so good, but smiled when he realized he still had half a glass and 3 wineries to go! We visited Shenandoah Winery, Wolf Gap Vineyard and Cave Ridge Vineyard, which had live music at sunset (the girl was great, singer/songwriter named Kipyn Martin, she sang some Fleetwood Mac, Joni Mitchel, Sheryl Crow, good stuff all around).

I mean, shut up. After visiting the wineries, we grabbed BBQ from Bean's BBQ, which is apparently famous in this area. It lived up to the hype for sure and made for a cheap and convenient meal.

We went for a hike at the Lost River State Park after hours by the pool on Saturday, which was totally lovely. I like when my workout is scenic and fun, it's like killing multiple birds with one stone. Here's a picture of D and a deer before we started the uphill climb, we saw exactly 12 deer and exactly 0 humans. Instead of making me feel lonely, it just made me feel closer to D.

If D gets a contemplative shot picture, I do too. Here's me and the mini-vista, maybe 75% of the way up the mountain. I use mountain loosely.

D at the top! He clearly wasn't very sensitive to my emotions, blazing Duke against his chest on one of our last weekends, huh? While we were enjoying the view and taking panoramas, it started to sprinkle, which turned into a crazy downpour. We jogged as best we could on the way down, at least where it wasn't steep, and we were literally soaked through. We made a lot of jokes about how no memories are made when everything goes according to plan.

Anything D can do I can do better: me posing at the vista.

We did cocktails after we cleaned up after the hike, then dinner at their restaurant, all delicious. We  played some bananagrams while our coffee cooled after dinner on Saturday night, but no one won because 1. our coffee cooled quickly and 2. he didn't like it much. Oh well. We played some pool with new friends, then visited the outdoor jacuzzi for a dip and to admire the stars.

Ahh yes, the culmination of our weekend. Upon realizing we had locked ourselves outside of the room while drinking on the balcony, D went to find the innkeepers and get a key. In the dark, since the flashlight was in our locked room. He stubbed his toe, which may be an understatement...I have a picture of it not covered, but didn't want to be indecent. He was a real trooper and made it through the night and breakfast with some hydrogen peroxide and gauze, but we spent a solid 3 hours at urgent care on Sunday afternoon. Thus is life.

Anyway, I would highly recommend this vacation to anyone looking for a close, relatively affordable trip away from DC.  It's an LGBT-friendly place, not sure if there's a PC way to label it, but there were one or two other straight couples and of course the proprietors and other guests were nothing if not inclusive of us weird straight folk :) We both wanted to ask people how they felt about the events of the past week, but felt it would be inappropriate. We did make a buncha friends, which was nice. 

I was minorly depressed the weekend was over, but it's easy to perk up when you have more travel lined up! I'm verrrrry excited to head to J's tonight, we leave for our annual drive up to Boston/Cape Cod at 4am on Wednesday, to enjoy the 4th with our families. Looking forward to fireworks and hot dogs and hugs.

P.S. happy July...whaaa??