Let me preface by saying my husband and I consider ourselves adventurous travelers and we find the greatest pleasure in staying in off-the-beaten-path places and make an effort to seek them out. We have stayed in tents in Africa, 14th century cottages in France, 12th century medeival towers in Italy and many, many cool cabins, cottages and B&B's across the country. I had high hopes that this would be another great adventure for my husband's birthday weekend. It was MISERABLE! The cuteness and quaintness ended within 5 minutes of the initial "Aawww!" when we walked in the door.

First, upon check-in the woman who checked us in spoke more to her dog (who she was afraid was going to eat her pizza while she was checking us in) than to me....she rushed me through signing my credit card receipt so she could keep an eye on her dog and could barely acknowledge I was standing there. She was so wound up about the dog eating her food I found myself anxious about what the dog was doing!

When we got to the cabin initially it was cute, but we had brought cheese, wine, crackers, etc. and realized all we had for utensils were a couple plastic forks and knives and two small paper plates for the morning breads. The wine opener appeared to be broken but luckily we had brought our own and had multi-tool in the car. The cabin was cold but warmed up quickly as we built a fire. Once the heat started to build the stench of animals took over, mostly the smell of a male cat. We made the most of it, but as soon as we went upstairs to the bathroom it was so hot a person could barely breathe! When I came down I asked if I looked skinnier because I was sure I had sweat off a couple of inches in the short trip to the bathroom! We consider ourselves hardy but a trip to the bathroom was brutal!!!

Later that night we climbed into an uncomfortable bed with lousy pillows. The heater would kick on like an engine and we would get hot, then within minutes of it going off we were freezing where I would have to put my face under the covers because the air was so cold to breathe (bed was between two windows). Luckily we were awake in the middle of the night when we heard rustling so the mice didn't get too much of our food. Fortunately we live in the country so my husband didn't freak out but instead got up and took care of the mice, others may not have had such a calm reaction. We concluded they used my purse to launch themselves up. After that everything went into the fridge and microwave.

The next morning we had to venture back upstairs to the sauna to shower and the only way to suffer through the heat was to open the window as wide as possible. Even with that I had sweat rolling down my back while I was drying my hair....to turn the heat OFF would have left my husband freezing downstairs. The shower is very small and the shower head shot three lame streams of water. I set my towel on the toilet lid while I showered and when I got out my towel was HOT just from sitting in the room.

We planned on spending most of the day relaxing and enjoying the atmosphere of the cabin....we brought books and music.....but we saddled up and left for most of the day and groaned when we had to return for the night. We went straight to bed and as soon as we got up we packed to leave opting to just wait and shower when we got back home so as not to suffer through having to be back upstairs. This is a very drafty cabin with HUGE temperature difference between upstairs and down. It does not appear to have had the necessary maintenance and upkeep that a cabin like this should have to ensure a comfortable stay for the guests. Especially when customers are charged nearly $200/night. On the drive home we passed some dilapidated old motels that were closed up and joked that we were going to upgrade and stay there next time.

So....go if you dare, but don't say you weren't warned!