There are girls’ trips where you pack the itinerary from morning until night, and then there are trips where the whole point is to have nowhere you need to be.
This was definitely the second kind. 😂
A while back, we challenged ourselves to spend 24 hours doing basically nothing but reading. We loved that little reading challenge so much that this time we decided 24 hours wasn’t enough. So our reading trip finally made it out of the family group chat, and four of us packed an unreasonable number of books and headed to our cabin in the North Carolina mountains for three days.
The plan was pretty simple: read as much as we wanted, eat really good food, make a few fun crafts to bring home, explore a little, and most importantly… leave plenty of room for absolutely nothing but reading.
Apparently, three days were exactly what we needed because we each finished one full book every day. Three days. Three books each. We also ate, explored, hiked to a waterfall, made crafts, drank lots of coffee, found a pumpkin market, sat in the hot tub, and stayed up way too late talking.
So if you’ve ever wanted to plan a reading retreat, book club getaway, cozy girls’ weekend, or basically any excuse to disappear into the mountains with a stack of books and your favorite people, I’m sharing EVERYTHING from ours.
So… What Exactly Is a Reading Getaway?
Think girls’ trip meets book club meets cozy cabin weekend—but nobody has to read the same book and there will not be a quiz at the end. 😂
There was no required reading list. We each brought whatever we wanted to read, and while I did make an itinerary because of course I did, it wasn’t a schedule we had to follow. The whole idea was to create a weekend where slowing down was actually the plan.
We had books everywhere, cozy places to read, really good coffee, easy meals at the cabin, a couple of bookish crafts and just enough exploring to break things up. And because this was a family girls’ trip, it gave the four of us a few uninterrupted days together too.
We’d sit beside each other reading for hours, and then someone would inevitably interrupt with, “Okay, listen to THIS…” and we’d end up talking about a book, life, kids, whatever else came up. We’d go right back to reading until somebody got hungry or needed more coffee.
It was exactly what I wanted it to be.
Our Cozy Mountain Cabin in Andrews, North Carolina
A huge part of what made this reading weekend work was where we stayed. We hosted the trip at our own Mountain View Lodge in Andrews, North Carolina, tucked away on three acres in the mountains, and I’ve never appreciated all of its little reading spots more.
We definitely didn’t spend three days sitting in one room. Someone could curl up by the gas fireplace while somebody else took a book outside. We read in bed, on the couch, on the balcony, around the cabin, around the firepit, and even in the hot tub.
One of my favorite moments happened when the rain rolled in. Instead of ruining our plans, it made them better. We took our books onto the covered deck and sat there reading while the rain came down around us. Give me a book, mountain air, the sound of rain, and I’m good for hours.
The mornings might have been even better. We’d make coffee and watch the mountains wake up before deciding where we wanted to settle in with our books.
Mountain View Lodge has a stocked kitchen, gas fireplace, hot tub, balcony, fire pit, Wi-Fi, games and plenty of room to spread out, so once we arrived, we really didn’t need to go anywhere. And that was important because this wasn’t supposed to be a sightseeing trip where we squeezed reading into the empty spaces.
The reading was the plan. Everything else fit around it.
The Cozy Reading Welcome Baskets
Before I packed my clothes for the trip, I packed these. Priorities. 😂
I wanted everyone to walk into the cabin and immediately feel like our Reading Getaway had started, so I made a cozy book lover gift basket for each girl and had them waiting when we arrived.
I filled them with:
- cozy fall goodies I picked up from pOpshelf
- Glocusent reading lights
- TWO pairs of World’s Softest Socks in each basket
- Barnes & Noble’s $5 Café Book of the Month, How to Survive Camping: The Man With No Shadow by Bonnie Quinn
- a few other cozy reading treats and little extras
The Glocusent lights and World’s Softest Socks were gifted, and both were SO good for this trip. The reading lights were perfect for late-night reading without lighting up an entire room, and those socks… I genuinely want to replace every pair I own now.
You definitely don’t need welcome baskets to host a reading retreat, but if you’re planning a bookish girls trip, book club weekend or reading-themed birthday trip, they’re such a fun way to start. You could make them as simple or elaborate as you want.
I’ve also put together a full Amazon Reading Getaway list with the reading essentials, craft supplies, coffee-bar finds, kitchen pieces and other things we actually used.
We Turned the Cabin Into a Little Book-Themed Coffee Shop
Three books in three days required coffee. Lots of it.
Instead of just setting out the Nespresso and calling it good, I turned one area of the cabin into our own little book-themed coffee bar. We had fall syrups, creamers, cute cups and a printed menu with four different drinks.
Our Reading Getaway coffee menu included:
THE PLOT TWIST — pumpkin spice + espresso with pumpkin sweet cream and pumpkin caramel
ONE MORE CHAPTER — salted caramel + espresso with sea salt sweet cream
THE SLOW BURN — brown sugar cinnamon + espresso + milk
HAPPILY EVER AFTER — chocolate + espresso + milk
Everything could be made hot or iced, and everyone could make whatever they wanted throughout the weekend.
Was an entire book-themed coffee menu necessary? Absolutely not. Did it make our cozy mountain reading retreat approximately 100 times more fun? Absolutely yes.
That’s kind of the theme of this whole trip.
What We Ate on Our Fall Reading Getaway
My rule for the food was that it needed to be really good without requiring us to spend the entire getaway cooking. I wanted cozy fall cabin food, but I didn’t want to finish a chapter and then realize I had signed myself up to make a complicated dinner for four people.
So we planned meals that felt special but were still easy enough for a relaxed girls weekend.
Easy Lunches + Cozy Cabin Meals
We did chicken salad on croissants with grapes and chips for one easy meal. Another was broccoli cheddar soup with crusty bread and our apple arugula salad.
For the salad, we used arugula, sliced Gala apples, Parmesan, pecans and Chick-fil-A Zesty Apple Cider Vinaigrette. It was simple but SO good with the cozy fall meals.
One of my favorite dinners was a creamy fall pasta with sausage, onion, garlic, brown butter, sage, Parmesan, broth and Target’s Brown Butter Pumpkin Heavy Cream. We served that with the apple arugula salad and bread, and it was exactly what I wanted to eat in a mountain cabin in the fall.
Breakfast, Desserts + Reading Snacks
Breakfast stayed easy too. Think cinnamon rolls, sausage and plenty of coffee rather than spending half the morning in the kitchen.
We had a delicious and EASY pumpkin crumble for dessert, Pink Pantry pumpkin chocolate chip cookies (SO GOOD!) with vanilla ice cream and lots of little snacks around the cabin. SmartSweets came with us for reading and movie-night snacking too, because if you’re going to sit around reading for hours, snacks are obviously part of the plan.
We also had charcuterie, which might be the perfect reading-getaway food because everyone can grab what they want without interrupting whatever they’re doing.
Basically, nobody went hungry and nobody spent the entire trip cooking. Win-win.
Our Reading Getaway Drinks
One night we turned craft night into drinks + crafts with our Bartesian, and this was such a fun girls-trip addition.
Everyone could choose her own drink without one person being stuck playing bartender all night. We brought flavors like Apple Pie, Espresso Martini, Cosmopolitan and Cafécito Churro, along with Refreshers, so we had plenty of choices, both as a cocktail and a mocktail.
We’d make a fun drink, sit down around the table with our craft supplies and spend the night making things and talking.
Which brings me to one of my favorite parts…
Bookish Craft Night: Two Easy Crafts for Readers
I knew I wanted a couple of book-themed crafts, but I specifically did not want complicated projects that would turn into work. I wanted things we could make while sitting around the table talking—and things we’d actually use afterward.
DIY Book Tote Bags
For our first craft, we made little canvas book totes using supplies from We R Makers/American Crafts.
These were so cute and such an easy book club craft or girls-night idea because everyone could make hers differently. Plus, you end up with an actual bag for carrying books instead of another craft that comes home and gets shoved into a drawer. 😂
DIY Scrapbook Bookmarks
For our second craft, we made scrapbook-style bookmarks using clear bookmark blanks, scrapbook papers and embellishments, Mod Podge, charms and other little supplies.
This was another easy one to set out on the table and let everyone make her own. No big instructions, no pressure to make them match, and everyone left with something different.
I added as many of the supplies as I could find to my Amazon Reading Getaway list so you can recreate both crafts for your own book club, reading retreat or girls weekend.
Our 3-Day Fall Reading Getaway Itinerary
Yes, I made an itinerary. 😂 But I think the reason it worked is because the itinerary wasn’t packed with reservations and things we had to do.
It gave us a loose rhythm for the weekend, while one of the biggest rules was basically: nothing is mandatory.
Day One: Settle In + Slow Down
We arrived at Mountain View Lodge, unloaded everything, set up the cabin and got settled. The welcome baskets were set out, we got the coffee bar ready, chose our reading spots and started doing exactly what we’d driven to the mountains to do.
We read.
A lot.
That evening we made our DIY book totes, ate together, hung out, and settled into cabin life. There was no pressure to squeeze in a bunch of activities because we had two more full days ahead of us.
Day Two: Wander + Explore
We started slowly with coffee, breakfast and reading before heading out for a little adventure.
We stopped at Morning Fog, headed out for a waterfall hike, and spent some time exploring downtown. We’d originally planned to visit a bookstore, but it wasn’t open yet. Instead, we found a pumpkin patch and market downtown, which felt pretty perfect for a fall girls trip anyway.
We’d also planned on going out for Mexican food, but ended up skipping that too.
And I actually loved that our plans could change without it feeling like we’d missed something. We weren’t racing from reservation to reservation. We could explore for a while, decide we were ready to go back and then head to the cabin and pick our books right back up.
That night was more food, reading, drinks, talking and hanging out together.
Day Three: Stay Awhile
Day three was our we really don’t need to go anywhere day.
We had slow coffee in the morning, breakfast, plenty of reading time, lunch at the cabin, and our scrapbook bookmark craft. We read outside, spent time in the hot tub, ate dinner, had dessert and just let the day unfold.
By this point we’d fallen into a pretty great rhythm: read until you feel like doing something else, do that thing, and then go read again.
Highly recommend. 😂
Our Last Morning
Our last morning was exactly what you’d expect after three days like this: one more cup of coffee, one more look at the mountains, and trying to squeeze in just a little more reading before packing everything up.
And even after three days, none of us felt ready to leave.
And Yes, We Actually Finished Three Books
This part still makes me laugh because this wasn’t meant to be some hardcore reading competition.
But we each finished one full book every day.
That’s three books each over our three-day Reading Getaway—and we still had time for crafts, a waterfall hike, exploring downtown, the pumpkin market, really good meals, fun drinks, hot tub time and plenty of talking.
I think that’s what surprised me most about extending our original 24-hour reading challenge into an actual three-day reading retreat. It didn’t feel like we spent three days doing only one thing.
It just felt like we finally had enough time.
How to Plan Your Own Reading Getaway
If you’re thinking about planning your own reading retreat, book club vacation or cozy girls weekend, my biggest advice is don’t over-plan it.
Choose a place where everyone will actually enjoy staying. Bring more books than you think you’ll need. Have really good coffee. Plan easy meals so nobody spends the weekend cooking. Add one or two things you can do together, and leave big stretches of the itinerary completely open.
A few things that made ours especially fun:
- individual welcome baskets
- plenty of cozy reading spots
- a book-themed coffee bar
- easy cabin meals and lots of snacks
- one or two simple bookish crafts
- fun drinks at night
- one afternoon for exploring
- plenty of completely unscheduled reading time
- books in the hot tub, because apparently that’s who we are now 😂
And if it rains? Find a covered porch, grab your book and consider it part of the ambiance.
Shop Everything From Our Reading Getaway
I’ve rounded up as much as I possibly can from our trip, including our reading lights, Kindle and book accessories, book tote and bookmark craft supplies, coffee-bar favorites, kitchen finds, cozy extras and more.
I’m also going to keep adding to this as I share more individual pieces of the trip, because there is still SO much I want to show you—from the crafts to the recipes to the coffee bar.
And yes, I’m already thinking about the next one.
Would You Come on the Next Reading Getaway?
This first three-day getaway was a family trip. But while I was planning everything—and especially once we were actually there—I kept thinking about how much I loved creating this whole experience.
The baskets waiting when you arrive. The coffee bar. The food. The crafts. The mountain mornings. The books everywhere. Having things planned if you want them while also knowing you have nowhere you have to be.
And I started wondering…
What if I opened up a future Reading Getaway so you could actually come with me?
I’m working on what that could look like now. I don’t have all the details ready to share yet, and I’m not opening registration or announcing anything before I know exactly what I want it to be.
But if a few days tucked away in the mountains with books, cozy mornings, really good food, coffee, crafts, fun drinks and plenty of time to actually sit down and read sounds like your kind of trip, you can get on the first-to-know list now.
📚 Be the First to Know About the Next Reading Getaway
You’ll be the first to hear about future dates, details and available spots when I’m ready to share them.
Bring your TBR.
I’ll take care of the cozy part. 🤎
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