I’ve mentioned before, that we typically go to a small cabin out near Front Royal over New Years with friends from college.  The good thing about the cabin was it was free, not too far away, and “rustic” enough that it was okay for everyone to bring their 17 dogs (I exaggerate, a tad).  The bad thing was it was small and short on bedrooms.  This year, we finally came to terms that we had outgrown our lil getaway, so we didn’t make our annual New Years trek.   But I still wanted to have my weekend getaway with my friends, so we began looking for other options.   We discovered that some of the Virginia State Parks have rental cabins and after a little digging, we booked a lodge that was big enough to hold our crowd.

Over MLK Weekend, we went to the James River State Park.  The have a collection of cabins, most are two or three bedrooms, but they also have two “lodges”, which are six bedrooms.   It perfectly suited to our needs.  They were “rustic” with mission style furniture, but also new and clean.  Dogs were allowed and there was plenty of room for everyone.  They didn’t have TVs or phones, which is good for “getting away from it all”, but we did have a plan in place to provide our own entertainment.   The Sunday forecast called for rain, pretty much all day.  So … one of my friends brought her projector, and the rest of us brought our Wii, video games and movies.   We were quite entertained playing games and watching movies.

It was a fun weekend of playing and hanging out, capped off with Adam’s birthday on Sunday.  It would be a fun park to come back to in the summertime, as it is on the James River, but I think we will also look for some cabin getaways a little closer to Northern VA (the trek to the James River park was about 4 hours – it is an hour south of Charlottesville).

Here’s the pictures from our weekend:

It was a fun weekend getaway!

Tags: Friends & Family, trips, vacation, winter