Hooooooboy, has it been a while.

Faithful readers of this blog (hi, mom! maybe!) may have noticed it’s been a little slow lately. That’s because life hasn’t been. And that’s because Briana Morgan and I have been spending lots of time traveling to medium-flung destinations, making the most of long weekends. It’s been great for taking photos — and lousy for editing and publishing them.

Here, let me throw a few at you. More on where they came from below the gallery.

We made our way last month to Shenandoah National Park in Virginia (pics from the park coming soon) and stayed at the nearby Cair Paravel Farm — owned by a delightful family who named practically everything on the property for Chronicles of Narnia references. Farmer Whit and his family aren’t interested in turning the property into a large, profit-geared farm — they’d have a tough go of it up on their mountain anyway — but they produce just enough to serve their family and guests like us (where their real revenue comes in).

So visitors get to meet a few goats (Bri loves goats), pigs and other critters — some of our fellow guests got a real kick out of collecting newly laid eggs.

We stayed in a gobsmackingly fancy yurt (if there’s one thing Bri loves as much as hanging out with goats, it’s a good yurt) Whit & co. had purchased from a local, female-owned business. This … was not exactly roughing it. It slept six easily. There was a loft. A tub and standing shower. A fridge. A damn dishwasher. We don’t even have a dishwasher at home.

And the family couldn’t have been sweeter. We had stumbled into a fairly overwhelming carpenter ant infestation at the yurt (nature, amiright?) and there wasn’t much that could be done about it, but Whit and daughter Maggie were attentive and apologetic as could be. They gave us free eggs and goat milk ice cream (soooooooooooo gooooooood) for our trouble — which was absolutely unnecessary but absolutely appreciated.

All the stars. Highly recommended. We only wish we’d stayed longer.