One With Nature
Nestled near Luray, Virginia, which is famous for its dramatic caverns, Spacious Skies Campgrounds-Shenandoah Views offers a peaceful, family-friendly haven surrounded by mountain views, rolling hills and friendly cows that greet campers along the fence line. Set up your home away from home at one of the campground’s RV sites, cabins, tent sites or glamping yurts. Most sites include firepits and picnic tables. A new camp store, two pools, dog park and playground with a new jumping pillow round out the fun.
Spacious Skies’ Luray location is one of 15 sites in a collection of campgrounds that begins in Savannah, Georgia, and runs north through the Carolinas and into the Northeast, all the way to Abbot, Maine. Early April is an ideal time to visit the Shenandoah area for spring blooms. Download the Seek by iNaturalist app (or bring another plant and flower identifier) and spot wildflowers, hepaticas, asters, Turk’s-cap lilies, spiderworts, anemones, wild azaleas and more along Skyline Drive and Shenandoah National Park’s many hiking trails.
Nearby attractions also include the Luray Zoo, Hawksbill Brewing Co., Bear Mountain Ziplines, Luray Caverns, the Car and Carriage Caravan Museum, and Shenandoah River Outfitters. Tent site rates begin at $27 as of March 8. RV sites with full hookups (water, electric and sewer) start at $51 for a gravel site, $64 for a pull-through site with concrete patio, and $50 for a deluxe pergola site. Yurts rent from $82 per night, and cabins with bathroom and kitchen from $88. Many of the sites have cable and WiFi services.
Spacious Skies Campgrounds-Shenandoah Views, 3402 Kimball Road, Luray, Virginia, 540-743-7222, spaciousskiescampgrounds.com/shenandoah-views
Bon Vivant Style
Enjoy with Gusto Hospitality Group, the company behind some of Easton, Pennsylvania’s top restaurants, poured a passion for chic one-of-a-kind design into its first boutique hotel—Townley House. Opened along Easton’s “Millionaire’s Row” in December 2020, the more than 150-year-old property was transformed into a boutique hotel with nods to an architectural history found in the original 1866 wood moldings, hand-carved mahogany staircase, and fireplaces with tiles originally crafted at Moravian Pottery and Tile Works in 1898 by Henry Chapman Mercer. Each of the 16 cozy guest rooms includes its own unique headboard (many vibrantly colored), luxury bedding, mini fridge, TV, tiled walk-in shower, bathrobes and slippers, plus turn-down service complete with a lavender pillow mist and sweet treat. Begin your evening in the garden adjacent to the hotel’s Bar Bix and order a creatively crafted (and named) cocktail. Guest favorites include the Tequila Mockingbird and the Practice What You Peach. For design inspiration, check out the garden’s claw-foot tubs-turned-planters. From there, head to dinner at River Grille or Three Oak Steakhouse, two of Enjoy With Gusto’s restaurants. Both are a short walk from the hotel. Rates begin at $220.
Townley House, 130 N. Third St., Easton, Pennsylvania, 484-544-4801, townleyhouse.com
Bird is the Word
Spend a weekend savoring songs—from birds and humans—at Merriweather Lakehouse Hotel in Columbia, Maryland. The nature- and music-inspired hotel is a tree-lined walking path away from Merriweather Post Pavilion, the iconic concert venue. The hotel’s one-of-a-kind partnership with The Birdsong Project (thebird songproject.com), launched in 2023, adds tweets and warbles to the music mix. The optional immersive in-room experience includes a boxed record set of more than 200 tracks of original music and bird-related spoken poetry. Spread the 20 art-covered albums across the floor and have fun choosing tracks to play on a Crosley record player from a flock of musicians and writers. Poets Ocean Vuong, Joy Harjo and Ada Limón are featured (some reading their own work), and actors such as Sean Penn and Daryl Hannah (who reads Pablo Neruda’s “Ode to the Hummingbird”) lend their voices to more, plus there’s music performed by Elvis Costello, Beck, Bette Midler and others.
The experience can be booked with a balcony/lakeview room or a suite and also includes boxed water, trail mix and a pair of Warby Parker “Birdoculars” to borrow for assistance in spotting birds from your balcony or during exploration of the walking trails. Raptors, terns, flycatchers, swallows, thrushes, warblers and orioles are just a few you may find. The Maryland Bird Guide is one project element that’s meant to be taken home. The guide, which was authored and co-illustrated by local birding enthusiast Xaviana Leis when she was 11 years old, is full of fun facts about birds of prey and backyard birds.
Nods to Merriweather Post Pavilion are scattered throughout the 212-room hotel in posters from concerts past and guest room photographs of performers through the decades, such as Janis Joplin and Led Zeppelin. The Osprey Cafe, the Rookery Bar & Lounge and the restaurant Lāk are all located on the lobby level, and the floor-to-ceiling windows of each overlook Lake Kittamaqundi. Lāk’s menu changes seasonally, featuring locally sourced ingredients from Maryland farms and seafood suppliers. Rates begin at $319 per night; $419 for a balcony suite with Birdsong Project amenities. Better still: Combine your visit with a concert at the pavilion (walk or take the hotel’s VIP shuttle service) and grab a bite from the midnight munchies snack cart when you return.
Merriweather Lakehouse Hotel, 10209 Wincopin Circle, Columbia, Maryland, 410-730-3900, merriweatherlakehouse.com
This story appears in the March/April issue of Bethesda Magazine.
