Pat and I packed up the dog and headed for the hills last week.

Specifically, a friend’s cabin on the Cowpasture River in Alleghany County in western Virginia.

It was a working vacation – we brought our laptops, Pat took a few conference calls, but with a limited internet and cell phones that worked best in a certain corner of the cabin, there were relatively few outside distractions.

At the end of the work day, we could wander down to the river, take a quick float, then head into town (Clifton Forge) for dinner. One evening, we stopped to take in a sunset from the cemetery that overlooks the town.

The cabin itself is located in a bit of a hollar, set on a cliff that overlooks the river. To the front of the cabin is a field, a cow pasture and mountains.

It was lovely to work on the screened porch, or if that got too warm, to go sit on the floating dock in the river. I’m pretty sure this is how I need to work every summer moving forward. It really makes working in August bearable. You’d really be surprised at how productive you can be while working from a floating dock in the shade.

We experimented with putting Betsy’s shock collar on her for walks and leaving her off leash. She clearly loved it and with one or two small exceptions, proved herself worthy of our trust. She is after all, a beagle, so there was a walk where she got a little too excited about seeing a large buck, but she mostly stuck pretty close to us.  Which is good, because the shock collar doesn’t actually work, we completely depend on the fact that it’s on her to curb her.

It was a fantastic little get-away, with a few other stops built into our week (Lexington, Harrisonburg) before coming home.  It was coming home where Betsy really seemed to start missing her Edie girl. Thankfully, Edie comes home from camp this weekend, which means the lazy days of summer will soon be replaced by schedules and school.  Summer always goes too fast.