Once Upon A Mountain

I mentioned (a few dozen times) that I'd been on vacation last week. In all honesty, I'm on vacation this week, too, but closer to home. (In fact I'm at my usual table at my usual library right now. Three cheers for free WiFi!) But last week, I was at a Wonderful Place. Once Upon a Mountain is a lovely B&B just outside Luray, VA. (As in "pass by the town limits sign, watch for the left turn ahead.") SItuated on 11 acres of south-facing mountainside, it is (a) peaceful & quiet, (b) sunny with fantastic views & huge windows and (c) really, really relaxing. Excellent breakfasts by Christa, too. (It's her place, after all, and she does it all with good cheer and some really, really tasty recipies.)

We headed up last Monday. (Please be advised that heading up, we didn't really know what to expect, so these photos are all reverse-ordered from the final trip back down.) After a hike out on the Interstate to the State Highway and driving through Front Royal and two other towns (the second of which we're not really sure we foun), we made it through Luray to the aforementioned left turn. Immediately thereafter, we saw this:


... which was quickly followed by this:


Having made it safely across the one-lane bridge, we saw picturesque barns, llamas (and alpacas, which, of course, were nowhere in sight when I had the camera available), a fun little farm/ranch called "Tooth Acres" (which, btw, is a surprisingly popular name for both dental practices and farms), and some cows.






Then we found the turn onto the gravel road, and started going up a mountain, whereupon we found another, much smaller, gravel road, and headed up that. At the tippy-top of that road, we found the B&B:




... and made our way around to the front door (with possibly three weeks worth of luggage, and definitely a month's worth of yarn).


The interior was just lovely. Open. Spacious. Amazing. This is our room, the Queen's Suite. Very comfy. There's a photo of the closet because it's HUGE. We have rooms in our house that would fit in this closet. Heck, we have closets in our house that would fit in the two-person TUB. Space, space, space, space, space!!!






Then there's the outside views....


Outside the window


Porch view, East


Porch view, West
Christa has two dogs, Mr. Mac (I hope I got that right!) and Willie. They're both suckers for head scritches, very sweet, and, best of all, I could actually pet them!! Without breaking into hives!!!


Willie
There were plenty of places to lounge about outside in the lovely fresh air. The hammock was super-comfy. One of my incentives to finish my Owls Sweater before we left was to get a pic of me wearing said Owls Sweater while lounging in this hammock. (Which I did.)


There was a fire circle, also comfy. Our last night out, Christa invited us to sit out under the stars and have s'mores. The sky was, indeed, clear - I could see the Milky Way for the first time in a long time, and a bunch of constellations I haven't seen since the last time I was in South Dakota. It was like seeing old friends. In the city, I'm not a fan of being out in the open under the sky, but out there, there's so much stuff in the sky to see that it's not at all scary. We even had a couple of falling stars zoom by.


During the course of the week, I wound 20 or so balls of yarn, knitted a sweater, knitted a little garlic clove, finished my tie, got sleeves on my shrug, crocheted two half-owls (should finish those up this week), two glass cozies (of a set of four), and thought about knitting more. A lot of it happened in my new Favorite Chair, with a warm cup of tea on hand:


Seriously. Best seat in the house!!