Getaway Houston Review - Great for a Socially Distanced Babymoon?

chris

Oct 8, 2020 — 10 min read

My wife Karla and I recently took a trip to Getaway’s Houston outpost. We’ve been looking for some way to get out of our apartment, at least for a few days. Work has been wild for both of us and I had just spent the weekend attending the Dad 2.0 Digital conference, so I was excited to disconnect and think about how to apply what I learned!

This review will go through our Getaway experience and how it was a great place for our socially distanced babymoon!

What’s the hype!?

Chances are you’ve seen an Instagram ad about these small, modern cabins in the woods. Well, we tried one of them out and the hype is real!

Getaway is a cool service that lets you book cabins outside of major cities. Getaway is a great way to disconnect from your busy, notification-filled life and connect with yourself, your partner and nature all in a socially distant way.

This review is specifically about the Getaway Houston Output (also known as Getaway Brazos Valley) but a lot of what I talk about applies to other locations.

This is not a sponsored review, but if you’re interested I do have a referral code at the end of the post for $25 off your first booking.

What is Getaway?

This is not a stock photo! This was the view of our cabin, as you can see by Karla’s pregnancy pillow.

I’ll admit, whoever thought about this name was a genius. How many of us have wanted to “Getaway” recently? It’s so smart.

Anyway, Getaway has tons of little cabins in the woods that you can rent to get away (see!), disconnect and relax. It’s not your typical cabin in the middle of the woods, but we’ll get to that.

The cabin really is in the middle of the woods. While there are a few cabins on the property, you still have a sense of privacy.

Where is it available?

Cabins are available outside many major cities. The appeal of Getaway is that their cabins are far enough to disconnect yet close enough to where you don’t have to worry about booking any additional travel arrangements.

Getaway Map of National Locations — Getaway has locations across the country. We visited Getaway Brazos Valley, which is just outside Navasota, TX and an hour drive from our apartment in the city.

We booked a cabin at the Houston Outpost, which is really in Navasota, TX and an hour drive from where we live. It’s also listed as Getaway Brazos Valley on their website. The drive was comfortable and if you leave with a full tank of gas, you could more than likely make it round trip without having to make a pit stop at Bucee’s (or any gas station).

How does it work?

Booking is easy.

Head to getaway.house and enter your desired location and dates. During my research, I found that weekdays were cheaper. You’ll see the price per night when selecting your date range which was helpful during my booking as I’m used to booking hotels and not really knowing the exact price per night.

There are two options: 1 bed or 2 beds. Once you select one and book your date range, that’s it. You’ll enter your payment details (promo code if you have one) and you’ll get a booking confirmation. Your actual cabin details (cabin name, cabin code, and address are sent a few days prior to your check-in. It’s a pretty simple process since all of the cabins are the same other than for the number of beds. No hassle, no paralysis by analysis. I definitely appreciated that!

Touchless check-in process

There’s no front desk or anything at the cabin. Cabin doors use digital locks and require codes. The code is texted to you at least 24 hours before your stay.

We were texted an address, which is the main address of the outpost, put that into Google maps and drove away. Getaway will provide an outpost map that highlights the property and helps you identify exactly where your cabin is.

Check-in is at 3pm and check-out is at 11am. Based on their communication, it doesn’t appear like there’s much flexibility there. We arrived after 3pm and left before 11am, so we didn’t have any issues.

Instructions are included

You’ll be greeted with lots of nice instructions when you get to your cabin. I never felt like I didn’t know where something was or how something worked. Everything was nicely labeled and instructions were clear for things in and outside the cabin.

You can always contact them if you need anything.

There’s a phone in the cabin that you can use to contact the field team that’s on premises. You can also text the number where you receive all of the notifications. Lucky for us we didn’t need any assistance. However, we did text them before we left on the last day and they were quick, nice and responsive.

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What’s included in the cabin?

I was pleasantly surprised at all that’s included in the cabins given their smaller size.

A queen sized bed, four pillows and clean linens.

It’s nice to have a queen sized bed. However, the mattress was a little too firm for my liking. The pillows were also very squishy (think down pillows) and did not offer a lot of support, which led to me waking up during the night a few times to readjust.

Luckily, Karla brought her pregnancy pillow, so I was able to snag a chunk of that throughout the night.

All things considered, you have a nice bed next to a huge window. It’s nice waking up to natural light, to be honest. You can also put the blinds down if that’s not your thing, but I’ll warn you, it gets super dark. Like, creepy dark.

A pretty stocked kitchenette.

I didn’t have to worry about bringing many cooking supplies. All I brought were some skewers for s’mores, a cast iron for the grill, and avocado oil spray.

There’s eating utensils, knives, tongs, salt, pepper, olive oil, pans, bowls, cups, mugs, etc.

The cabin has everything you need to cook. They even include a large roll of aluminum foil (not pictured) that you use for cooking on the grill outside.

If there’s any food you’d like to bring, the kitchenette is big enough to fit in a few days worth of food too.

Picnic table, outdoor chairs, personal fire pit and a fire kit.

Although there are many cabins in the outpost, they’re all pretty separated so you still get that sense of privacy.

You have a good sized picnic table and a small fire pit with a grill. They do have a fire kit at each cabin, which consists of a bundle of firewood and some fire starter, but they all come at a cost.

I had to go through a few of these since I’m not the outdoorsy type, but if you are, you might find this works for you. If you’re the DIY type of person, you might consider bringing your own firewood.

We brought tons of snacks. These are some of my favorite chips! Taste great and I can pronounce the ingredients!

Is it safe?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Getaway is the safest you’re going to get. There’s enough separation between the cabins to where you still feel like you’re alone in the woods. According to Getaway’s website, all staff are in proper PPE (although, you never really interact with them anyway) and cabins are deep cleaned.

Karla and I have been isolating strictly at home and we felt safe throughout our time at the cabin. You can find their COVID-19 response here.

Some of the COVID-19 measures Getaway is taking to protect their guests.

However, there are some things that I would warn any pregnant couples looking to get away for their baby moon.

For pregnant couples – watch your step; there’s lots of them.

It’s a small cabin, so space is hard to come by. Karla is 6.5 months pregnant and we found ourselves being extra cautious with the steps in the cabin, especially when she needed to use the restroom at night.

There are few steps to enter the cabin, and there’s also a step to get onto the bed and a step to go into the restroom. It wasn’t a deal breaker, but if you or your partner are pregnant, it’s something to keep in mind. You want to be cautious and not risk injury while you’re trying to get some quiet time. That’d be some 2020 stuff, huh?

Karla taking advantage of the queen sized bed. There is a pretty big step she had to take to get here, which is something to consider if you or your partner have accessibility requirements and/or limited mobility.

Narrow down your packing list; things are different around here.

This includes any clothes, toiletries and food. We tried to pack everything we needed to avoid having to go to a nearby grocery store. Unfortunately, we forgot some things at home (butter and pancake syrup!) and needed to visit the local grocery store.

We didn’t want to make a 40+ minute drive to an H-E-B or Walmart in the city, so we opted for the local grocery store that was 10 mins away. Once we got there, we realized no one was wearing masks. No one. It was quite the shock for two people who have been hunkering down for 6+ months, so if you want to avoid the experience we did, triple-check your list.

What’s there to do?

The purpose of our time here was to getaway and… do nothing. But if you want to be out and about, there are some options for you!

Hiking (Kinda)

I say kinda because this place is still near Houston, which means things are mostly flat. So hiking around here really means walking on a paved trail in the woods.

There were a ton of these American beautyberries.

There’s a trail on the grounds itself, but it’s pretty short and not that interesting, to be frank. Most of the time I felt like we were just walking in the shrubs and getting followed by mosquitoes (don’t forget the bug spray!).

There’s a one-way road that takes you around the outpost, so we ended up taking a walk along that instead of the trail.

There are other places you can go to for hiking, swimming and fishing, although they’re a drive away. Lake Conroe is a 50 minute drive, with other small parks and trails within a 45 minute driving distances.

Relax!

We spent most of our time inside and outside the cabin doing a lot of nothing. We played music on the Bluetooth speaker in the cabin and read some books, played some card games and talked about the next few months we have together before our baby arrives.

If traveling as a couple, this is a great way to connect and not worry about the busy life you have at home.

If you’re traveling by yourself (I would, tbh) this is an awesome way to get some alone time and focus on you. Catch up on your personal projects you’ve put aside for a while. Take advantage of the lack of distractions you have out here.

Books and card games

Our cabin came with a mini library which was nothing more than a few books for us to read.

Our favorite was a book with tons of card games. We had brought our own card deck, but there was a brand new one in the cabin that was available (probably for an extra charge).

What about pets?

This one is for you pet lovers. Yes, you can bring your furry friend (dog) but be sure to add them to your booking!

There’s a $40 pet fee per booking.

Final thoughts – it’s a nice and easy Getaway

We enjoyed our time here and would definitely consider coming back.

We booked the smaller cabin for 2 nights. Should we come back next time, we’ll probably go for the larger cabin and 3-4 nights. Of course, next time we’ll be here with a new addition 👶!

Where are the discounts man?

Okay okay. Thanks for reading until the end.

If you’re interested in booking a stay, use my referral link for $25 off.

If you booked, let me know what you thought on Instagram and Twitter!

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Some of the links in the post might be affiliate links. This means that I might make a small commission should you buy something. This is at no cost to you. Thanks for supporting NEW2DAD!