When You Want To Stay In Nature, Don’t Complain When Nature Wants To Say Hello

by joeheg

Don’t complain when you get what you asked for.

The whole point of picking a remote cabin in the north Georgia mountains as the location for our socially distanced vacation was to get away from everyone. I realize now that getting away from other people also means getting closer to the rest of nature than I’m typically used to.

On our first day at the cabin, I was looking around, marveling at how well our friends and we did in picking a place on Airbnb. It was everything we asked for, and more.

Then I looked in the shower.

fullsizeoutput_1aa

Yep, that’s a scorpion.

I’m just glad I didn’t discover him when I went to take a shower in the morning. We were able to capture him (or her) and put them back outside where they could eat spiders or centipedes.

All was awesome again, until I discovered another one the next day in the bathroom trashcan.

I spent the rest of the trip locking my shoes in my suitcase every night and watching where I stepped if I had to get out of bed in the middle of the night.

Speaking of centipedes, or millipedes, this huge sucker decided to visit us one night while we were sitting in the hot tub (the picture doesn’t give a good idea of its size. It was a good 4 or 4.5 inches long).

hvUxkTenQiOU4sBCwsGNeA

Lest you think our time at the cabin was only full of visits from insects, when watching a movie one night it started to rain. We heard some noise on our front porch but thought it was the wind. When we went outside, we noticed the lid was off of the garbage can.

Then we noticed the wet bear paw prints on the porch. (sorry, it was dark and the pictures didn’t come out).  We did manage to get some other animal print on the porch next to our boot prints the next morning.

fullsizeoutput_1ac

For the rest of the trip, we made sure not to leave any food in our car or outside the cabin.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. We wanted to get away from everything and be in the woods. This is what you get when you stay in the woods.

I’m not going to be one of those people who write a silly complaint such as, “We wanted a cabin in the middle of nature but there were too many insects and bears were roaming on our porch at night.”

Like this post? Please share it! We have plenty more just like it and would love it if you decided to hang around and get emailed notifications of when we post. Or maybe you’d like to join our Facebook group – we have 14,000+ members and we talk and ask questions about travel (including Disney parks), creative ways to earn frequent flyer miles and hotel points, how to save money on or for your trips, get access to travel articles you may not see otherwise, etc. Whether you’ve read our posts before or this is the first time you’re stopping by, we’re really glad you’re here and hope you come back to visit again!

This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary

8 comments

RetiredATLATC September 3, 2020 - 6:16 pm

As a full time cabin owner in the north Georgia mountains I can wholeheartedly relate. Last week we had a family of black bears come “visit” to tear apart some fallen logs, looking for grubs etc.

The only thing I can’t deal with is the copperhead snakes.

Reply
joeheg September 3, 2020 - 11:03 pm

Our friends saw a copperhead down by the river.

Reply
RetiredATLATC September 4, 2020 - 1:43 pm

😖

Reply
Gene September 3, 2020 - 6:55 pm

Love it!

Reply
Darlene dacison September 5, 2020 - 5:47 pm

Actually I bought a house in the city, but the property was actually woods. I’ve here 2 yrs and I have had a bunch of scorpions in my house, little black wormy things that are hard to kill and yes centipedes. I use to live in Arizona had had much bigger scorpions since in lived on the side of a mountain. I really do hate bugs

Reply
NB_ga September 8, 2020 - 10:55 am

Where do you live that scorpions and millipedes are not present, especially during in a rainy summer? Bears, coyotes, deer, red fox, copperheads, plus a multitude of both harmless and stinging bugs… these freely roam my suburban Atlanta abode without question. If I were to drive an hour north to where you seem to be vacationing, I would expect all of the above to join me on the porch each evening. The more, the merrier! To expect otherwise would seemingly require residence in an enclosed concrete platform with no outside interference?! *Beautiful cabin, by the way!

Reply
joeheg September 8, 2020 - 11:06 pm

We live in Florida. We have our share of lizards, spiders, wasps and raccoons. I didn’t mind the wildlife. It was just different than what I’d experienced.

Reply
NB_ga September 11, 2020 - 10:06 am

Oh my yes, as Floridians, you certainly know. Those giant flying roach-like things freak me every time I am down there!

Reply

Leave a Comment