Upon returning home from our summer camping weekend in Decorah this past August, I immediately started dreaming about a fall getaway. There's not much to dislike about this cutesy little town in the driftless. It's small but hip, charming but not pretentious, and close to home, yet easily feels like a thousand miles away when we're there. I love fall as much as the next person, but after coming off of a summer break at home, this season and all its back-to-school glory leave me chasing my tail (or at least the kids' activity schedule) until November rolls around. So back in August, I knew we'd be ready for a break from it all and booked a little cabin high in the bluffs just outside of Decorah. We pulled the kids from school on a Friday in October, packed the truck with everything we needed, and headed north.
It had all the essentials - a stove top to warm up soup and an oven to bake something warm and delicious, a loft with two beds for snuggling up under all the blankets, and a front porch perfect for a cup of coffee and a sunrise.
Our view and our cabin kitty! She was fat and friendly, so we quickly decided she must be the cabin's mascot. The kids loved her!
This weekend was just what our family needed to reset, recharge, and spend time to look at each other and talk to each other and love each other well. Some days, you just gotta run away from it all. And Decorah is the perfect place to run to. Our Friday night started at a little place called Luna Valley Farms - a little pig and goat farm on the edge of town that serves wood fired pizzas and craft beers on Friday nights. This place was a dream. We ordered pizza and ate inside a barn, the kids sipped hot cocoa and roasted marshmallows by the fire, and soon took to rolling down the grassy hills as the sun went down and the sun came out. And the icing on our cake happened to be that our fellow Decorah loving family and best of friends were enjoying a fall weekend in Decorah, too! The kids picked up right where they left off, creating some elaborate mystery hunt in search of "missing water bottle girl" while Nate, Kate, Beau, and I sipped Jefferson County ciders and dreamed about traditions in Decorah for years to come.
Our cabin was in the middle of nowhere, a good twenty minutes outside of town, but our drives to and from were some of my favorite memories of our weekend. Friday night, we drove down lots of gravel roads, listened to Creedence Clearwater and Elvis, and kept our eyes open for deer. We pulled down the long drive to our little cabin and felt like we were in the middle of nowhere at the very edge of the world. We nestled in, made cups of hot cocoa, popped popcorn, and played board games before snuggling in for some Harry Potter story-telling before bed.
More to come...
"Keep close to nature's heart - and break clear away once in a while, climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean."
-John Muir
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