Hellobee

We use all our vacation time to visit family, so we’ve never taken a vacation with just the four of us. After a long, cold winter I was itching for a getaway, so two weeks ago we decided to take a little weekend trip upstate. Mr. Bee found the cutest cabin nestled in the mountains of Woodstock on AirBnB. I love using AirBnB over hotels because trips feel like much more of an experience. We’ve stayed at some really interesting and beautiful homes through them, and it’s just much more convenient to have a full kitchen and more space when you’re traveling as a family. We packed some clothes and not much else, and drove 2 1/2 hours to our destination for the 3-day getaway.

The screened-in back porch

Woodstock is most famous for the eponymous music festival in 1969, and you can see its influence remains today as many music shops and art galleries dot the downtown area. We had some general ideas of what we might like to do, like visit nearby Cooper Lake and hike up Mt. Guardian right behind the property, but we pretty much stayed at the cabin, explored the woods, and relaxed most of the time. We did pass by the KTD Monastary on the way to the cabin, and it was truly stunning… I’d definitely like to visit it on a return trip.

view from the cabin of the surrounding property which had three ponds

Every amenity we might need was there: wifi, cable tv, fully stocked kitchen, board games, toiletries, washer/dryer, etc. The entire cabin was decorated perfectly to suit the surroundings, and it definitely felt like we had left the city!

The surrounding property featured 3 ponds and a creek with lots of little waterfalls and wading pools for the kids to explore. Olive fell in and both kids got very wet, but they had a blast doing it. They ran up hills, collected sticks, played in the water, and just explored nature.

In the evening we grilled hot dogs outside. Every time the kids help cook, they eat much more than usual, and I’ve never seen them eat so many hot dogs!

We had a roaring fire going pretty much the entire time we were there.

We don’t have a tv at home and watch everything on an ipad, so watching on a big screen is always a treat!

The local town had plenty of restaurants and markets so we ate out once a day (a 10 minute drive from the cabin), and stocked up on groceries so we could prepare most of our meals at home.

The one place we wanted to visit was Fiber Flame in nearby Saugerties (thanks hilsy85 for the suggestion!), so we decided to stop on our way home. It’s a huge arts and crafts studio where you have a vast array of crafts to work on, from painting ceramics to woodworking and so much more. Our kids adored this place. We have paint your own ceramic studios in our neighborhood, but I wish we had something like this that offered so many different types of mediums!

Olive checking out all the embellishments

Charlie painting his wooden case

Olive painted a wand then covered it with crystals with a little help from me with the glue.

During the trip I felt so relaxed, because I’m a total nature girl. I love being in nature, and I love driving in nature — two things that have a great impact on my anxiety. It was such a big boost for my mental health, and I didn’t realize just how much the daily grind of city life had worn me down until we got away to the peaceful mountains. Of course the kids always have a blast when we’re in nature too, and pretty much any trip is exciting for them. Because it was a short trip that didn’t involve a lot of planning or travel, it was very low stress and we didn’t need time to recover from it when we returned home (like we do whenever we visit our families). There are so many towns we can explore within driving distance, we’ve vowed to do this much more regularly. This 3-day, 2-night trip was just the pick-me-up I needed!

How often do you take short family trips? Where do you usually go?