On a recent trip to Sequoia my friend Denise and i stayed here. When I booked the place I did so…read moreafter consulting a few websites but not really diving into them, so I did not know what this place was about. I just knew it was rustic--- on theme for a woods-forward trip- and close to Sequoia. And I assumed it was, at its core, an inn in a town. When Denise and I arrived we discovered that what awaited us was different than what we expected- not in an extreme way, but, in a way that separated where we slept from where we had to shower. These two points were far enough that we would need to walk from our room to another structure. Not a far walk, but still a walk that felt inconvenient because we are city folk, not outhouse people, even if they are modernized. I do not know if I made it clear, Denise and I discovered that what I booked was a cabin with no bathroom and the bathroom was like a 10 to 15 feet walk to a modern outhouse that felt impossible to get to, especially in the black and cold of the night.
Denise and I were introduced to our shed turn cabin at around 10::00 p.m. We quickly accepted that we did not have a typical inn room, I had opted for the green cabin. It was a form of glamping. The actual room was snug. She took the bed up that up a ladder, like the one one walks up when they have bunk beds. And I stayed on the bottom bed. The place had a table, hooks, the beds a tv mounted on a corner and not much else. It was a place to sleep, and watch tv while laying down on the bed, it was not much more. So when I call it a cabin, do not imagine a cabin in the woods with a fire, a bear rug, a couch with quilted cushions and a mounted elk on the wall. It literally was what I described before--- mostly a couple of beds with a shed built around it.
I showered in the outhouse the next morning. It had two stalls with a toilet and three to four showers, with one out of order. I had stepped into the bathroom of mountain folk and as a vacation experience it slapped, if it were my regular life, I would miss the privacy and comfort of a city bathroom with its sturdy plumbing and opportunity for me to blast my beats as I shower.
When I went inside my shower, I saw that the shower was not a shower-head mounted on a wall. Instead it was one of those shower heads that is like a hose. You can pick it up, and shower with it while you scrub yourself with one hand, and hold the shower head with the other. I did not fully understand how to change from old clothes to my new clothes, so I ended up wetting my new clothes. I left them in the corner of the shower, and I believed that the water from the shower hose would not get them, but it did. For those who think that they would have handled the situation better than I did, even thought it was their first time, like it was my first time, I say they are probably right. I tend to be clumsy and miss hooks, and not really think of clothes enough to protect them from hose water that can run wild. In this place, one has to prepare logistically to tackle a shower.
When Denise and I woke up the next morning, we were able to see the expansive wood scenery that awaited us. It was precious and majestic and the pay-off of enduring the lack of city comforts.
The place also had this patio area with fairies, they were ceramic of course, but maybe at a certain time of day they awake at least for seconds to tend to the woods so they keep green and strong. I sat there. Took pictures of the trees, through a netting roof, and at this moment knew I was in a rustic-wood dream sponsored by dust of fairies, and I was in a state of stiff calm that settled by a nymph's blessing. With the poetic stripped, the place offered me peace because I was surrounded with pronounced nature in the form of tall trees, dirt trails, a blue sky, and I was not in a rush. I could simply enjoy the blue, green and brown all around me, with ticks of the clock ignored. I guess that is the promise of a vacation in the woods fulfilled.
There was also a cat that belonged to the place. It was peached colored and clipped in all its glory. I forgot its name. Denise and I took a short walk to the small clearing behind the inn. And the cat decided to nestle besides her. So this place also has another charming quality of a good inn: a permanent guest, of the feline persuasion, that always greets visitors with a purr and a paw. Those kind of touches transformed our wooden cabin in the woods, into a wooden cabin in the woods where we interacted with a four legged creation, not a moose or a bear, but still the spirit of nature's animals was all around us.
I just re-saw the picture of the tall trees behind the netting roof and I felt the umph of nature's breeze hitting my inside again. The magic of the woods came home with us, great souvenir if you ask me!
