Life and Mountain Laurel in West Virginia

Whew. It’s been a long-ass six (or seven?) months since my last post. Not like a whole second global pandemic long, but not too far off the mark.

For the last – gosh, I want to say, for 10(!?) months — my lovable and wonderful non-husband, XFE has been dealing with aging family members’ health issues. Since August of last year, XFE would go out to his parents’ house in North Las Vegas and stay for a few weeks, or even a month to help out, while trying to work remotely at the same time. And then when he was here at home, he would try to work at his high-pressure, stressful job while dealing with his parents’ health issues remotely.

It all felt like failure, all the way around and we knew it would not be sustainable at some point.

Over the past two months, his dad’s health issues and the associated responsibilities have ramped up to the point where XFE has had to take a leave of absence from work and move out to North Las Vegas to help care for his dad. We went out in mid-May and XFE stayed behind while I came home.

So, I’m spending the next three months without my own caretaker, my partner, my support system, my best friend/co-cat parent/personal chef/comic relief/entertainment coordinator/activity planner/handyman/chauffeur/remote-control pilot/accountant/weekly shopper/emotional sounding board/gut checker/work advisor/ride-or-die/partner in crime and all-around motivator.

Basically, I am having to go without my everything and all the things.

I feel entirely unmoored while having to pretend that everything is fine. Just fine. Because there’s someone close to us right now who really needs him more than I do. And I’m an independent and self-sufficient adult (allegedly).

As we were preparing for this time apart, we talked about all the things XFE was going to miss while he was away. One of those things is mountain laurel season at the cabin here in West Virginia.

It is truly a gorgeous time of year out here in Lost River. The mornings are still pretty cool (in the 40s) but it warms up to the high 70s by mid-day and it’s just a pleasant, comfortable time to be here.

The trees are all filled in, creating this little green oasis that feels so private and removed from the rest of the world.

There’s also the sound of constantly rustling leaves as deer, rabbits, chipmunks, squirrels and who knows what else move through the underbrush completely invisible to the human eye. You hear a rustle and turn your head but can’t see anything. Then you wonder if you really heard anything at all but now you hear another noise and it’s from a different part of the forest, so maybe that’s what you heard the previous time? Who can tell?

The early birds are nesting and having baby birds. We’ve already had round one on one of our drain spouts. Miss Bird was still nesting some eggs when we left. There were at least three little fuzzy-headed baby birds by the time I got back out here. I accidentally scared them all out of the nest the other day after returning from the grocery store. I hope they’re all ok.

More and more mountain laurel are popping every day, going from tight pink buds to fluffy white blooms. The air smells just gorgeous and spring-like, especially as the day warms up. Bees and butterflies are flying around them lazily.

There’s a little bee friend on the middle left.

We’ve got a lot of the mountain laurel on the hill behind the cabin and last year, XFE and I sat on the back porch in the evenings with a cocktail or some wine just listening to the bees and the breeze, taking tons of pictures of the flowers.

This year is very different and I’m sad that he’s missing it. I know there are bigger things to be sad about – in particular, his dad’s health and what’s going to happen next – but I am sad. I just am.

Anyway, XFE has asked me to use this time to get back to blogging, so here I am. I don’t think this is what he had in mind, but it’s at least a new start. Like a mountain laurel bush in the spring.

Trip Report: St. Regis Bali (also, Revisited)

Winter has settled in at the cabin, it gets dark at like, 4:30, and with the holidays and probably snow right around the corner, I thought I’d travel back in time to much warmer days—ie: my ongoing trip report for Southeast Asia.

When last I left off, we had just finished the first leg of our first big post-COVID international trip—three days in Singapore. The next leg of our trip took us to a familiar destination: St. Regis Bali.

St. Regis at sunrise

We loved St. Regis Bali on our first visit in 2014. The staff, the food, the villa, the lagoon, the private pool – it was all just perfection. So much so, in fact, that we tried to go back in 2017 but because of some WTO ministerial or some other international governing body visit, we were informed just weeks before our stay that St. Regis was unavailable, but the fine Starwood folks would be happy to put us up at literally any other Bali hotel. However, my shrewd travel-agent-for-life, XFE instead suggested that they put us up at the newly opened St. Regis Maldives and that’s where we went (spoiler: It was really, really nice as well).

We woke up early and made our way to the Singapore airport, where I proceeded to have a bit of a meltdown at pre-boarding security. Let me start by saying: I am a very conscientious packer. I’ve seen too many people (including on this trip) try to take all sorts of items that they must know by well would not make it through security, including food and drink items, lighters, lighters that look like replicas of guns (!), handcuffs (?!), box cutters, literal scissors (hand on my heart, I saw an Indian woman trying to take scissors through security in her carryon this very trip. And also, baby food and formula. Lots of it).

So I always make damn sure there is nothing in my bag that could set off security, not even a sewing kit. Except for this time. This time, I had a pair of cuticle scissors in my makeup bag. They were part of a nail kit that I had thrown in without realizing. And boy, was I adamant that I did not have any scissors in my makeup bag. I threw a hissy fit and kept insisting that nope, not me, no way, I did not have anything even remotely sharp in my makeup bag. Except that I did. Oops.

Now sweaty, flustered and embarrassed, I settled in for our two-hour flight from Singapore to Bali.

True to form, Bali was again getting ready for an international gathering of trade and politics, the G20 Summit, which took place in mid-November. Signs and advertisements were up everywhere. However, this time, we would not have to reroute our trip and would be staying at our favorite resort again.

Check-in at St. Regis was easy and we were in our villa in no time. And, it was just as wonderful as our first visit. The villa was the exact same; ie: gorgeous and smelled like frangipani. The private deck and plunge pool was amazing and secluded. XFE had called ahead and made sure we had a kite ready and waiting in our room, which was really sweet.

Our villa floors.

We changed and got in some beach and pool time. Now, I’m not much of a beach person and while Bali does undoubtedly have some lovely beaches, there is one small issue (actually not small, it’s a real problem) – trash. A ton of trash washes up on Balinese beaches. Although to be fair, this isn’t just a problem in Bali. It’s all through Southeast Asia. Just a lot of single-use plastics, Styrofoam, and other debris wash up on the beach all day long. Despite the resorts best efforts to clean it up, it just keeps coming.

Clean beach spot.

Despite the trash, the days became a peaceful blur and we settled into our resort routine – early breakfast at the buffet and some kite flying (and trash pickup) on the beach.

Then back to the room for a very liberal application of various sunscreens. We had all the SPF numbers in cream, gel, stick and powder formulations. Properly protected, we’d head out to our deck and pool to read and listen to music.

At lunch, we’d head back down to the beach area to eat with our feet in the sand and people-watching—my favorite resort activity. My lunch favorites were the fish and chips and a pizza with tomato confit. XFE had an amusing encounter while ordering a club sandwich. He asked for extra mayo and ended up with extra chicken, bacon, and lettuce instead.

Our kites patiently waiting for us to finish lunch.

We’d fuel up with mojitos at the beach bar and then head back to our room for more reading, lounging, napping until 5-5:30, when we would clean up and go to the King Cole bar for sundowners and to watch the champagne sabering and the sunset fire dancers.

We made a meal off their appetizer menu one night and ate at the resort restaurant, Kayputi another night (my fish dish was divine) but most nights we ordered room service (the mushroom risotto and Caesar salad were particularly good).

We usually fell asleep pretty early most nights because we are just such hard-core partiers (raging till 8 or 9 every day). On our last day, we gave our Balinese kites to two boys from Switzerland and XFE showed them how they worked.

Everything was just as wonderful as our first visit and the staff was exemplary and friendly as before. It was a truly idyllic resort vacation. I didn’t even miss my cuticle scissors.

Trip Report: Singapore Revisited

I’m writing this from the very back of the struggle bus. We got back from our Singapore-Bali-Indonesian islands vacation about a week ago and we are still trying to get back on schedule.

I don’t know if it’s because we’re old or just out of practice or what, but both XFE and I are having a hard time staying awake past 8 pm and we both keep waking up at 4 am, unable to get back to sleep. We’ve never had this type of jetlag before, at least as far as I can remember.

BUT, it was a truly great and memorable, once-in-a-lifetime trip, so there is that.

We started with three days in Singapore, which we’ve been to before. I absolutely love Singapore. It’s a vibrant busy city that’s a mix of history and modernity. There’s amazing modern architecture, plenty of things to see and do, most everyone speaks English, and the food is just phenomenal. It’s overall bustling and busy with these surprising pockets of peace and serenity (like a garden or a temple). I just really love it.

We stayed at the Westin Singapore which is right near one of our favorite hawker centers, Lau Pa Sat. We had a memorable dinner of satay skewers and beer while sitting at a communal table set up in a closed down street that just an hour before had been a major thoroughfare. It was busy and chaotic in the very best way.

We landed at 6 am after an 18.5-hour direct flight from New York to a soggy and very humid Singapore morning. After a quick shower and refresh, we headed out for (what else?) a private food tour with a guide from WithLocals.

Since it was our second visit to Singapore, we decided to skip the museums and arranged a couple of “insider” tours. A food tour seemed like a great way to get to know the city better and get acclimated to our Southeast Asia schedule.

Our three-hour tour with William took us from Kampong Glam to Little India and finished at a Chinatown hawker center where we had “the cheapest Michelin-starred meal in the world” – soya sauce chicken and noodles from Hawker Chan.

We finished the tour stuffed to the gills and while it was all very, very good, I think our favorite thing was the garlic naan served with a side of butter chicken sauce at Tekka Center in Little India. Not butter chicken, just the bright orange, creamy delicious sauce. Genius.

The next morning, armed with an iced coffee, we went back to explore the Kampong Glam neighborhood a bit more. We also wanted to stop in for an early(ish) gin and tonic at Atlas Bar.

While I gawked at the gorgeous Art Deco-inspired interiors, XFE put the bartender through their paces, ordering (and getting) the most obscure gins we’ve come across in our various travels and which we can’t get in the U.S. Handcrafted gin from the Swedish island of Hven? Oh yes, they carry that, and in a couple of different variations. South Africa’s Inverroche gin? One of the barbacks would have to go up the gin tower to get it, but Atlas definitely had it in amber, classic and verdant.

We skipped lunch at Atlas that day (though we came back for a late lunch the next day) and made our way over to Clarke Quay for chili crab at Jumbo Seafood. We had learned our lesson from our last visit and came prepared with a Ziploc filled with napkins, hand sanitizer and our own latex gloves. We were seasoned pros this time, ready to dig into our sweet, saucy bowl of chili crab with a side of fried rolls and large Tiger beers.

Stuffed yet again, we opted to walk back to our hotel, walking past all the fun bars and restaurants that line the Singapore River. XFE even recognized the bar we had stopped in for beers the last time we were here. Since it had begun to rain (did I mention we were there mere days after the Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix, the start of which had to be delayed over an hour due to thunderstorms?), we did not revisit the bar, but kept on going, winding our way through Ann Siang Hill Park (a total oasis and hidden gem right in the CBD) on the way to our hotel. 

Our final day in Singapore we met up with another WithLocals guide (the delightful Joise) for an “off-the-beaten-track” tour of the Hougang neighborhood. It was really, really fascinating!

We learned all about Singapore’s unique housing situation – most of the homes (condos and apartments) are built and owned by the government, who then sells them at subsidized rates to citizens. Approximately 85% of homes in Singapore are owned in this way, with very few homes (and hardly any land) being privately owned.

This policy has guaranteed that most citizens can “own” their homes and has kept overdevelopment and speculators at bay. It also prevents foreclosures, since the government works with anyone who falls behind on their mortgage payments to keep them in their homes, sometimes putting a pause on the loan or even lowering the monthly payments.

We peppered Joise with questions about other public policies and citizen’s attitudes towards education, crime and punishment, retirement and aging, COVID and vaccinations, religion, same-sex relationships–all of the things. It really gave us a lot of insight into the typical Singapore person’s life.  

The rain started coming down pretty hard around noon, so we had a pretty low-key rest of the day, including room service dinner, catching up on some shows on our laptops, and packed up to leave early in the morning for our next stop — Bali.

A sign at one of the hawker centers, which apparently are quite dangerous and prone to fights breaking out.

Can’t We Just Stay in Our Bubble?

I think hermit crabs have the right idea.

It’s official – COVID lockdown has ended. I know this because I’m pretty sure we were the last holdouts and we have finally loosened up our protocols.

We are no longer sheltering in place, just the two of us and the cats. We’ve slowly peeked our heads out of our collective shells and gradually started to return to a semblance of our previous lives.

My non-husband XFE has gone into his re-opened office over the summer with increasing frequency and also attended some work events. I attended my first work-related conference in person in DC last week. We’ve gone on a couple of small trips, including our first international trip (a week in Mexico in July). We’re even going to a wedding this weekend.

Our assimilation has been at a slower pace than a lot of people we know but it all still feels super weird and risky to us. As far as I can tell, most folks have already had COVID at least once so they feel slightly safer than those of us who never caught it. And, with vaccines and boosters, it seems like we all feel comfortable that even if we do get COVID at this point, we won’t likely die from it (This is the group we’re tentatively in. However, we are still very afraid of the unknowns around long COVID).

In many ways, we had to loosen up. We didn’t really have a choice. The world was starting to move on without us. XFE got promoted this summer, which continues to produce many celebratory get-togethers. Conferences went back to being in-person and no longer offered a virtual option. Offices have gradually opened and companies are encouraging/pressuring people to come back in the name of “culture.” Family health issues came up that needed to be addressed immediately and in person. Despite XFE’s best hair-cutting efforts of the past two-and-a-half years, I could no longer ignore the state of my hair. And we keep getting invited to things we really didn’t want to miss.

So that’s where we are — nervously tiptoeing our way back into society.

But I have to say: I kinda miss our pandemic lockdown bubble.

I actually liked not feeling pressured to socialize. Right before the lockdowns, I had a ton of work and personal travel planned, and to be honest, I did not want to attend all of it. I liked having that built-in excuse for bowing out – “No, sorry, we can’t go. We’re still being very COVID cautious.”

I liked how we all slowed down, reprioritized what was important, and focused on self-care. Of course, I didn’t like being scared—even downright paranoid—about catching COVID. But I did like feeling like the safest thing we could do for everyone was to just stay home.

Plus, I learned a lot about XFE and his job while we were both working from home. While we worried about ourselves, our loved ones, and the country (A LOT) over those two-and-a-half years, we also had fun and laughed and ate awesome homecooked meals three times a day and watched a lot of really bad TV.

We bought a cabin and hunkered down in a place that felt spacious and safe. We got to enjoy a slower pace of life in a place that still stuns us with its’ beauty. We quickly established a routine and fell into a nice rhythm. Right now, things feel very much up in the air as we try to figure out where we need to be and when.

So after an already busy September and a hectic-looking October, I’m ready for another lockdown bubble. I don’t want another pandemic (obviously), but I’m not ready for the world to go back so quickly to the way it was before.

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 to stick with that decision. We did not want a breakthrough infection and we did not want to potentially expose anyone else.

Still, we needed a vacation. Not a ‘work 12-hour days AT your vacation home’ vacation, but a real break. A COVID-safe vacation. Preferably something outdoors with minimal human interaction.

So we went ATVing on the Hatfield-McCoy Trails System, a network of off-roading mountain trails in southern West Virginia.

I take no credit for this vacation. It was all XFE. He found it, he researched it, he booked it and he was very, very excited about it.

I was a bit more reticent. After all, we’ve never really done anything like that before. There was that one time we went dune riding in Peru, but we were not allowed to drive those dune buggies. This would be a total self-driving situation. For three full days. On muddy trails. Plus, we’d be staying in a cabin, which seemed silly to me since we HAVE a cabin. And a really, really nice one at that.

This whole thing was not exactly my typical luxury travel vacation. Still, it was a vacation and a chance to unplug from work and other distractions.

We packed up the SUV and drove five hours west towards the border of West Virginia and Kentucky for our ATV adventure.

Day 1

We (and by we, I mean, XFE had actually timed it perfectly because there’s a huge festival – National TrailFest – that takes place every October and brings in thousands of people from all over the world.  This year it took place October 7-11. XFE arranged our vacation for the week before, which was perfect. The trails weren’t crowded at all, especially on the weekdays. By Thursday afternoon though, you start to see an uptick in traffic.

We chose Gilbert as our home base and rented a self-catering cabin at Canebrake Cabins, which is just across the street from a trail entry point (RockHouse trail entry #17). Our cabin (the Willow) had a grill and a full kitchen, and it was clean and well-equipped, if a bit noisy (it’s right on a busy road), but it was perfect for our purposes. It also had an ATV washing area in the parking lot, which we definitely needed at the end of each day.

Gilbert wasn’t much to look at. In fact, considering it’s such a tourist destination, it seems a bit run down, if I’m being honest. Since we’d brought all our own food and beverages, we didn’t spend much time in town, so I can’t really speak to any of the amenities there.

The first morning, we picked up our super fancy Kawasaki KRX 1000 side-by-side from Mountain Top Adventures at the Twin Hollow Campgrounds. After filling out some paperwork, purchasing all our trail permits ($50 for non-residents), and a brief run-through of how to operate the ATV, we were allowed to drive off and start getting muddy on 700-plus miles of trails.

End of Day 1

I will say, ATVing is a lot more fun than maybe I had expected. Yes, it’s loud and bumpy and even muddy, but it’s also really fun. It feels a lot like being a kid again and riding the rides at a carnival or amusement park. Getting dirty was just part of the fun. And, there’s no cell service on a mountain trail, so nobody was checking phones or replying to emails. All you can do is hold on and ride (or drive, which was mostly left to XFE. )

I only drove the ATV for about 20 minutes, which was more than enough for me, as you can tell by my face.

We obviously didn’t hit all 700 miles of trail, but we did rack up 200-300 miles each of the three days we were out there. We made it out east to the Buffalo Mountain system in Delbarton and Devil Anse system in Matewan. We got up early on those days and drove the ATV on the highway (albeit, slowly) to get to the far side of the system and work our way back towards Man or Gilbert via the connecting trails. But our favorite trails turned out to be in the system closest to our cabins, RockHouse.

Great views, guaranteed.

And ladies, if you are worried about whether ATVing is for you, just think of it as a very primitive spa vacation. You start early in the morning with a cryo-therapy treatment (those mountains are cold and foggy in the morning). This is followed by alternating treatments of microdermabrasion (in the form of sand) and organic mud facials, all while receiving an all-over body massage via the constant rumbling. Aromatherapy comes in the form of the forest plants and shrubs whipping past you at 25 miles an hour. Plus, there’s the adrenaline flush you’ll receive as you look over the side of steep mountain inclines sans guardrails.

If that doesn’t convince you that ATVing is for everyone, I’m not sure what will.

We survived the Hatfield-McCoy Trails

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 replacing the original water filtration system and the original, incredibly noisy HVAC.

As I write this, someone is outside replacing and staining pieces of cedar siding that got destroyed by the woodpeckers and carpenter bees.

We’re slowly coming to the end of the initial list of projects we wanted to undertake here at the cabin.

But there is a project that is still on our not-immediate-but-eventually project list: replacing the toilets in our two bathrooms.

New meaning to “flushing money down the toilet”

And, oh my.

As someone who has never shopped for toilets before, I had no idea there were sooooo many options. Like, a lot of options.

  • Do you want a one-piece toilet or the traditional tank and seat setup? Or what about a tankless option?
  • What sort of flushing options do you want or need? Gravity flush or pressure assisted? Or you could really splash out and get a dual flush model.
  • What bowl shape can your space accommodate? Do you want a round or elongated bowl? Maybe even square elongated? How about that?
  • What about the height? Should we get the traditional 15 inches or maybe a taller 17 or even 19 inches?
  • How much water will the new toilet use (that would be “gallons per flush,” for all you lay people out there)?
  • Do we want floor mounted or wall mounted (that one is pretty much already decided by existing plumbing and all)?
  • What color do we want (again, this one is pretty much already decided – we have one white and one “almond” toilet already in the house, but maybe we just want to live less wild and go for two whites? Or one white, one biscuit? Or linen? What is the difference between biscuit and linene? I don’t know!)
  • Do we want a discreet quiet flush model?
  • Where do you want the handle? Right, left, top? If we go with top flush, do we want oil rubbed bronze or brushed gold?
  • What about slow close seats? That seems like it might be nice, right?
What about a gold throne? This one at the Guggenheim is actually art.

This is a lot more than I expected to have to ponder. And the stakes feel very high here. It’s an important part of your daily routine, so you want it to be the best you can afford. But—and here’s another thing I never knew—toilets can get really, really expensive. Sure, you can go with a pretty basic model at around $100, but once you start adding in all these nice-sounding features, it can really get up there, like, $1,500 range. Generally, for a one-piece, elongated, single or dual flush, comfort height, soft-closed seat model, it’s around $400 to $600.

A fully-loaded TOTO toilet with dual-flushing system, heated seat and air purifying system? That will set you back $14,000. (BUT, it does clean itself, which I argue makes it totally worth it.)

Bling, bling, poo, poo.

Plus, I mean, how often do you really replace a toilet? Not very often. So you want to make sure you get it right. You don’t want a toilet that’s going to be obsolete in a year or two. You want the latest toilet innovations and a commode that’s built to stand the test of time.

There’s also the tricky issue of disposing of the old ones. How? Where? Will the trash guys just take them?

And so, the toilet replacement project is at a standstill. Clogged, if you will, by indecision on my part and an unwillingness to spend silly amounts of money. Maybe we’ll get to it in the spring.  

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 day trips is to Canaan Valley and the Blackwater Falls State Park. Located 47 miles west of our cabin, Canaan Valley is a national wildlife refuge at the headwaters of the Blackwater River, and home to a major ski and golf resort.

Canaan Valley has a pretty standard story for this state: It was full of wild and beautiful forests until logging, railroads and coal came into the area and all the forests were cut down for industry. By the 1920’s, the Canaan Valley was completely barren. In the 1930s, after plans fell through to establish a hydroelectric power plant, the West Virginia Power and Transmission Company donated the canyon and falls to the state and the park was formally established in 1937. All the forests on view today are second- and third-generation growth. 

We’ve not been to Canaan Valley Resort in the winter, but in the summer and fall, you can pay $8 to ride the ski lift up to the top of the mountain and hike down to the valley. We did this in July, hiking the provocatively named Bald Knob Trail and the wild blueberries were out of control. We were wishing we had brought a Ziploc bag to haul some out with us. I’ve heard it’s even more gorgeous in the fall when the leaves are turning and the whole valley is ablaze in color.

We did not see another single soul out on Bald Knob Trail in July, which was a moderately challenging hike. At the end of the hike, back at the chairlift base, is a bar and restaurant called Quenchers, which has some outdoor seating. The service is meh and the chef is usually completely missing in action (I guess summer hours are a bit lax?). But the local beer, Big Timber Blonde Ale, is very satisfying after the hike, as are the sidewinder fries (which the waitress can fry up, even if the chef isn’t in yet).

We’ve also hiked and fished along the Blackwater River Trail, which was a nice easy 1-mile loop with beautiful wetland scenery right off the parking lot near the golf area. There are a ton more trails (I think about 18 miles worth) within the resort area to explore, either hiking or via mountain bike.

Just three miles down the road is Blackwater Falls State Park, which is a pretty popular tourist destination. The falls are five stories high and are named after the amber-colored water that’s a byproduct of the tannins picked up from all the fallen leaves and pine and spruce needles along the river’s 31-mile journey.  

The park has several overlook platforms to view and photograph the falls, including a handicap-accessible platform. In addition, the park has a 20-mile system of hiking trails. We’ve hiked the short, out-and-back Lindy Point Overlook a couple of times, which has an amazing view of the Blackwater Canyon, and the Elakala Falls Trail, hooking up with the Yellow Birch Trail to create a 4-mile loop that started and ended at the Blackwater Resort parking lot.

Lindy Point in the Fall (via Friends of Blackwater)

The Blackwater Resort has been closed for renovations throughout the summer and fall, so I cannot comment on their waitstaff or the fries.

So there you have it. A nice little daytrip in West Virginia’s Tucker County. As for us, we do plan on visiting sometime during the snow season to check out some of those activities as well.

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 stores over the past year.

There is, of course, one exception. One place that we have dared to venture into — several times in fact. A place that we willingly drive 45 minutes to get to, and where we mask up, go inside around other people of admittedly unknown vaccination status, place an order to go, and pay and wait anywhere from 15-20 minutes for said order. And then, of course, we lather up in hand sanitizer that we keep in the car.

That special place is Farmer’s Daughter Market & Butcher in Capon Bridge. 

Farmer’s Daughter is a small, family-owned store and butcher shop selling a limited inventory of locally sourced meat, produce, dry goods, dairy products, and assorted sundries. You won’t fill up your pantry with a stop at Farmer’s Daughter, but you could put together a simple meal, and the wine and beer selection is pretty good considering the store’s small footprint (they even have Shiner Bock sometimes, which warms my Texan heart to no end).  

But what Farmer’s Daughter is famous for is their hamburgers, which the Washington Post describes as “world-class.” They are not wrong. These burgers are dry-aged, meaty poetry between two delicious brioche buns. We had our first Farmer’s Daughter burgers in April, to celebrate the two-week anniversary of our vaccine shots. We have been back every few weeks since.

In addition to a rotating selection of meats, including lamb bacon and some seriously kickass sausages, the Farmer’s Daughter butcher counter has a small, three-item menu of sandwiches prepared while you wait.

You can (and absolutely should) get the already mentioned House Burger, but they also have a really good Italian sub. But where things get really inventive and interesting is their special sandwich of the day. Recent special sandwiches include a tasso ham and pimento cheese with fried egg, beef bulgogi with kimchi, scallions, gochujang mayo, and beef and cheddar with caramelized onions and pickled jalapenos.

We usually order one specialty or Italian sub (wrapped to go) and two burgers, which eat right away, while still hot, at one of the outdoor tables on the side of the building. We have eaten those hamburgers at those tables on hot, sunny days and on spring-sprinkles-of-rain days. We’ve also eaten them right there in our parked car when the wind got too gusty, like that first time in April.

I remember that first trip: I was a little disappointed that they didn’t sell fries to go with the burgers. After that first burger, I realized, they don’t need them. These burgers don’t need any sides. We don’t even bother with a bag of Route 99 chips, which are sold at the shop. Each bite is the perfect mix of meaty, salty, tangy, creamy, vinegary, cheesy goodness and nothing could elevate their perfectness.

I sometimes toy with the idea of becoming vegetarian again, but Farmer’s Daughter burgers have made that impossible. Literally, every time we go (including this past Saturday), we each swear that it was an especially good burger that day. Because it always is.

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 woodland.

So how did we get here? And, specifically, how did we end up in the Lost River Valley in the wilds of West Virginia.

Wardensville Garden Market

I first read about the Lost River Valley in this 2017 article in the Washingtonian about this gay DC power couple who were revitalizing a town in rural West Virginia and attracting other DC transplants to move out there. Everything started off well but then things got a bit contentious with the locals and the battle was on. Pretty juicy stuff.

I’m sure I was on deadline or had other things to do, but I thought the whole thing was fabulous. I went down a rabbit hole reading everything I could find about this LGBTQ friendly outdoorsy outpost in (of all places) West Virginia that I had never even heard of. Apparently, it had gotten a fair amount of press coverage, including in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Charleston Gazette and West Virginia Living

I finally dragged myself out of my rabbit hole and filed the information away with the idea that maybe we’d visit this quirky little place someday and show our support for the guys by buying an artisan candle something at the Lost River Trading Post.

Lost River Trading Post

Then we took a couple of spring trips to North Carolina, renting cabins, enjoying the beautiful mountain views, trying out different hiking trails, and just embracing the idea of a much slower vacation pace. As we sat on the deck of one cabin near Asheville, we began to talk about maybe, someday, in the very distant future, buying a mountain cabin of our own. Then the pandemic hit, and well, someday become why not now?

Still tucked away in far corner of my mind was the memory of this rural town in West Virginia where a lot of DC people went for vacation. It was close (only 2 hours away) and after finally doing a little research, we found out that it had all the things we loved about North Carolina – lots of hiking, beautiful (and plentiful) state parks and national forests, lakes and streams for fishing or other water sports, plus, at least a couple of cute little country towns with restaurants, shopping and farmers markets catering to tourists and vacationers.

Wordplay Bookstore in Wardensville

We were right. The Lost River Valley has been all those things for us (although, we haven’t done much shopping or going to restaurants yet). But it’s actually been so much more. For one thing: the people have been so very nice. Everyone is curious and quick to find commonalities, and from what we can see, are really welcoming and tolerant of us interlopers.

And there are actually a LOT of us interlopers. Like I said before, I think we all had the same idea at about or around the same time. One of the other homes in our small “subdivision,” sold in February to a young DC couple who commutes out here weekly. One of our runner-up houses sold in December to a couple from Maryland who have become Instagram friends. Speaking of Instagram, I used to follow a photographer from our neighborhood in Alexandria. I noticed about six months ago that he changed his Instagram handle to @greatappalachian. Turns out he bought a farmhouse in Wardensville and is currently renovating it.

It goes without saying that it is breathtakingly beautiful here. Whenever we’re driving somewhere, I am just blown away by how beautiful the mountains and sky are. Right now, with all the trees full of leaves, the mountains and hills look like they’re covered in little broccoli florets. When I go with XFE to his favorite fishing spot, I’m in awe of the sheer rock cliffs and hypnotized by the sound of the river. And the hiking has been just gorgeous. Challenging, but gorgeous.

Eagle Rock on the South Branch Potomac River

Even the two-drive from our house in Old Town to our cabin is beautiful and peaceful. Once you turn off US 66, you really start to decompress and it feels like you are in an entirely different, much less rushed world.

Then there’s our little five acres. I’ve loved watching the landscape and views change from late fall to full on winter to early spring. My favorite (so far) is watching the fog roll in and engulf the whole cabin, making all the woods extra mysterious and spooky. It feels like we’re wrapped in a cotton ball.

Or, maybe my favorite is seeing all the stars at night so bright and so clear from our little mountaintop? That’s pretty magical as well.

Oh, and the other morning, I woke up early and sat out on the screened in porch for just a bit, and the silence and the stillness (no birds chirping yet at that hour) and the heavy, humid green smell of the grass and trees right before the sun came up was pretty amazing.

So maybe that’s my favorite thing about being out here? I don’t know. I honestly cannot pick one. 

But I do know my least favorite thing: carpenter bees. And all the other bugs. 

A Few Lessons From Living in the Country

There are a few things no one tells you about living in the country

  1. If you live at the top of a mountain—even a small one—it will be very, very windy a lot of the time.
  2. Get used to the sounds of gunfire. Even if it’s not hunting season. At first I thought there must be a shooting range nearby, but no. People just like to shoot out here as a form of entertainment.
  3. Also, get used to random animal noises, in general. Geese, cows, dogs, roosters, hawks overhead. We are constantly looking at each other and going, “What was that? Was that a donkey?”
  4. The sparkling water selection at the local Walmart is small. Tiny, really. There is no Perrier, no San Pellegrino, no La Croix. XFE found Poland Springs one time, but never again. Also, the cheese selection is less than stellar, which is such a surprise because there are cattle, goats and sheep EVERYWHERE.  
  5. No one uses electronic payment methods. It’s check or cash. No Venmo, no PayPal, no Zelle, no Cash app. We recently coordinated payment collection to regrade/resurface the gravel road in our “subdivision”. Every neighbor brought over a check for their portion.
  6. Contractors work on their own schedule and it is not quick. This is actually universally true, but especially so in the country, where distractions such as various hunting seasons can come into play. For example, as the road contractor was finishing up the neighborhood road, we asked him to add our driveway to his work schedule. He gave us a quote and said he’d start the next day. That was two weeks ago. He did drop off a culvert last Wednesday, but no idea when actual work will start.

But the biggest lesson we’ve learned is that when you live in the woods, your house is constantly under attack.

We had a glimmer of this truth when we had the home inspection at the cabin in early October. We noticed a few small holes in the cedar wood siding. The inspector said they were woodpecker holes and probably caused by woodpeckers looking for carpenter bees. Nothing too alarming, we were told, and they’ll probably stop once humans are living in the cabin full time again.  

By the time we closed and moved in on the 22nd, there were actually quite a few new woodpecker holes in the cedar siding.

Early woodpecker damage we tried to patch up.

And they did not stop once the humans came. We could hear them during the day and would run out of the house waving our arms and yelling at them. We patched holes again and again with wood putty. We googled “how to get rid of woodpeckers” and bought these hanging icicle dazzler type things that would beat against the house during particularly windy days.

Finally, as real winter set in, the woodpeckers stopped attacking our cabin.

Then spring came, and with it, a new but related menace. Carpenter bees. Dozens and dozens of these slow-moving bees were suddenly buzzing around our front porch and back deck, thwacking themselves into our large windows. Tons of them, steadily gaining in numbers as the days warmed up and the sun came out.

At first, I was charmed by them. I knew the pollinator ones we were seeing don’t have stingers (only the queen bee does). They’re chubby and cute and flying around all drunk on pollen and drowsy. They totally fit in with the #cottagecore, country cabin vibe I had in mind.

But they were certainly increasing in number and they were slightly annoying, buzzing aggressively around us every time we stepped out the door.

Let me tell you something about carpenter bees: they don’t have a hive. Instead, carpenter bees bore these perfectly round holes into your unpainted wood siding (preferably soft woods, like, cedar) and that becomes their home.

Sawdust from a bee hole under our deck railing

They then make tunnels and chambers throughout the wood and that’s where the queen bee comes in in the springtime and lays her eggs in each individual chamber. The male bees come in and leave pollen in each chamber and close them up with regurgitated wood so the eggs can hatch and the baby bees can eat the pollen before boring their own hole to get out.

These new bees then go flying around all summer, bringing pollen back to their birthing chamber/home so they can hibernate there—inside your siding–throughout the fall and winter and attracting woodpeckers who just love to find and eat them. Ergo, get rid of the carpenter bees and you get rid of the woodpeckers and save your cedar siding.

The bees had to go.

More googling led my resident bee slayer/partner for life, XFE to a bunch of different nontoxic remedies, including citrus oil and bee traps that look like little bird houses. But most online advice said it’s best to use these efforts BEFORE the bees have fully constructed their tunnels, and well, we just couldn’t be sure where the bees were in their construction process (maybe they’re like the area contractors out here and take a really long time?) and we couldn’t risk another season of woodpeckers.

Since we were starting a bit late in the season, we knew we had to go full max: strong insecticide spray applied directly into the tunnels. Then, an allover application to the entire house. Finally, after 24-48 hours, when all the bees have abandoned the chambers, plug all the holes.

So for several days last week (actually evenings. They recommend doing this at dusk when the bees are less active), XFE suited up and slayed bees. It was bonkers. First of all, the sheer number of holes we found all over the house was shocking. I figured there were maybe 8-10 holes, but there were at least a couple of dozen, maybe even close to 30.

And each hole seemed to have at least 3-4 bees in them. There was one front porch pillar in particular that was vibrating with bees after XFE sprayed the cyfluthrin into the tiny space where the wooden pillar met the vinyl underside of the porch ceiling.

It was a bee massacre. The bees would come staggering out of the holes and fall to the ground where XFE and I would stomp on them to put them out of their misery. The crazy thing is we still have bees coming back—although a LOT fewer of them– looking for their home, even days after we did the individual treatment, the allover treatment and plugged the holes with wood putty.  

We are still getting the birdhouse/bee traps as a maintenance maneuver and we’ve contracted a handyman to replace some of the wood siding that’s been damaged by the woodpeckers. Hopefully. Eventually. When he gets around to it.