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Magic River

About Magic River and Wintergreen

Magic River is a beautiful 5-bedroom house located on the even more beautiful Wintergreen Mountain. Step off the back deck and you are in the woods, where you can follow a bubbling stream or walk the Old Appalachian Trail. And since the house is up on Wintergreen Mountain, it is less than a 5-minute drive from the ski slopes, the golf courses and tennis courts, the spa, the restaurants, and all the other amenities that make up this vacation resort.

20% of your Magic River rent helps the poor help themselves: click here for more details!

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Note about pictures: With the exception of the stock "snowboarding" and "golf" pictures, all of the photographs on this page were taken at or around the house. Most of them (the ones that look really professional) were taken by photographer Jessica Long, to whom we are eternally grateful. You can click on these pictures to see a larger version.
Inside the House • Just Outside the House • Special Resort Privileges • Wintergreen in Winter • Wintergreen Year-Round • Our Story

Inside the House

The house contains five bedrooms and 3½ bathrooms. 12 people can comfortably sleep in the bedrooms, plus another two in the living room.

See the picture gallery for photos of every room in the house.

click for full picture Downstairs

• Large family room. Includes a full entertainment system with large TV, DVD/CD changer, and surround sound. Also, the couch in the living room rolls out into a queen-size bed.
• Large kitchen with breakfast bar and dining area overlooking the woods.
• New master bedroom with king-sized bed. Off the bedroom is a full bathroom with a large shower with two shower heads.
• Small bedroom off the living room, with convertible double bed and foosball table.
• Half-bathroom off the living room.
• Fireplace.
• Large deck overlooking the stream.
• Mudroom. (Very useful after skiing, hiking, or splashing in the stream.)
• Laundry room.

click for full picture Upstairs

• The original master bedroom with queen-sized bed. Off the bedroom is a full bathroom with a large soaking tub and a shower.
• One bedroom with three twin beds.
• One bedroom with a bunk. The top is a single bed; the bottom can be either a double bed, or a couch.
• Another full bathroom with bath and shower

Finally, a word about hot water

Magic River uses a state-of-the-art "tankless" hot water system, which means exactly what it sounds like: there is no tank that is kept perpetually full of hot water. Instead, the water is heated up when you need it. So if five people take five showers in a row (*not all at the same time, unfortunately), they will all get great showers with plenty of hot water and pressure.

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Just Outside the House

click for full picture As you look out the large windows in the family room, you see no neighbors at all: only the woods. The gorge that the stream runs through is a designated greenway, ensuring that houses will never be built in the woods behind the property.

Running through the woods, just behind the house, is the Magic River itself. "Stream" or even "creek" might be a better word: it's rarely deeper than your ankles, or too wide to jump across. But to us, and to our kids, it's a river. From the original two upstairs bedrooms, it is the first thing you hear in the morning, rushing over small waterfalls outside your window.

Our kids have spent hours building a dam in springtime, or skipping stones across the water. They have walked across the ice-covered water in the winter. And all of us can sit on the deck and watch the stream, and the woods, any time of year.

Walk up the driveway and just past the first two houses on the right, and you will see a small sign indicating the entrance to the Old Appalachian Trail. This is one of our favorite parts of every vacation: hiking along the trail, sometimes seeing how far we can go, sometimes bringing a picnic, but usually stopping at various points along the stream to explore the woods.

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Special Resort Privileges

Golf picture Our membership in the WPI (Wintergreen Partners, Inc) extends the following privileges to all guests who stay at our house.

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Wintergreen in the Winter

Wintergreen is, first and foremost, a skiing/snowboarding resort. Check out the slopes!

Actually this isn't us; it's a stock picture we got from Wintergreen • Twenty slopes and trails, ranging from gentle "green" slopes to adventurous "double black diamonds"
• A ski/snowboard terrain park, and also children's terrain
• Two high-speed six-passenger chairlifts, plus one Quad, two Triples, and one Double
• A 100% computerized snowmaking system and state-of-the-art grooming fleet
• Twelve lighted slopes for night skiing

The first time we went to Wintergreen, Joyce was a very experienced skier and Kenny was a complete beginner. We both had a great time.

Experts will appreciate both the long steep slopes (a 1,003 foot vertical drop, with the longest run 1.4 miles) and the terrain park. Some of the varieties of rails that you might find on any given day are rainbows, straight rails, battle ships, down-kinks, s-rails and fun boxes. As for snow features, they might have tabletops, spines, or hips. They re-shape the park to have something new each time you come to ski or ride.

Beginners will appreciate the free group lessons offered to any guest who rents Wintergreen equipment.

In addition to skiing, you'll find two tubing parks. "The Plunge" is a 900 foot, 10-lane mega-snowtubing hill with typical speeds of 25-40 mph with a vertical drop of 100 feet. "The Slide" is a gentler ride for kids.

And speaking of kids, the "Treehouse" offers a variety of child care, group lessons, and all-day programs.

Finally, Wintergreen Adaptive Skiing (WAS) is a nonprofit organization that instructs disabled children and adults.

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Wintergreen Year Round

As you've probably guessed, our primary reason for going to Wintergreen is to hike through the woods, enjoy the breathtaking beauty of the mountains, and then relax in luxury back at the house. But there's a lot more to Wintergreen than that.
Golf: The "Devil's Knob Golf Course" is rated as one of the state's top courses, boasting a 50-mile view of Shenandoah and Rockfish valleys. The 27-hole, par-72 "Stoney Creek Golf Course" was created by Rees Jones, designer for seven US Opens and six PGA Championships. And the Wintergreen Golf Academy boasts a low student-to-teacher ratio.

Tennis: For the fourth consecutive year, Tennis Resorts Online has ranked Wintergreen as one of the top 10 tennis resorts and one of the top 10 tennis academies in the country. In addition, Tennis magazine has ranked Wintergreen among the nation's top 50 tennis programs for the past 17 years. Located in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Wintergreen offers 19 outdoor clay courts and 3 indoor deco-turf courts.

Wintergarden Spa: A fitness center with a 12-station strength and conditioning circuit and free weights. Cardiovascular equipment including five treadmills, four stationary bicycles and two stair steppers and two body peak trainers. Yoga studio. Indoor and outdoor swimming pools. Whirlpool, hot tubs, steam rooms and sauna. Massages, body wraps, skin care treatments, and nail care.

Out of Bounds Adventure Center: Adrenaline-pumping activities include in-line skating, skaterboarding, BMX biking, mountain biking, paintball, a 25-ft climbing tower and bungee trampoline. There is also miniature golf, which is pretty cool in a less adrenaline-pumping way.

Horseback Riding: Guided trail rides, pony rides, riding lessons, or private rides through the spectacular Rockfish Valley or the scenic Stoney Creek trails.

Wintergreen Nature Foundation: Nature hikes, environmental education and family programs.

Dining: The Copper Mine Restaurant and Lounge ("An American Steak House"), the Devil's Grill Restaurant and Lounge (clubhouse on the golf course), The Edge Restaurant (casual dining right at the top of the slopes), Stoney Creek Bar and Grill (overlooks the golf course), and many more options.

And that's all up on the mountain, where nothing is more than a 10-minute drive from the house. If you venture down the mountain, you're only a 20-40 minute drive from Charlottesville and Staunton, three minutes from the Blue Ridge Parkway, and a quick hop to Thomas Jefferson's Monticello (where they have tours for both adults and kids).

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Our Story

click for full picture For us, it was the river that did it.

Our family (two adults and four kids, ranging in age at that time from 2 to 10) first visited Wintergreen with our best friends. (The picture at the left was taken during this visit.) We fell in love with the Blue Ridge Mountains—the colors of the fall during the day, the spectacular sky at night. We knew we would be coming back again, and again. And somehow, we wound up touring with a real estate agent to look for a house.

The problem was, we all had different agendas. Kenny wanted nearby hiking. Joyce wanted a comfortable mountain retreat with a good view of the night sky. (Joyce is also the real skier of the family.) Mary wanted to look outside and "feel like she was in the mountains." Every house we looked at, somebody didn't like. We've never bought a vacation house before, maybe we should just give up.

And then we saw the house by the stream. Our real estate agent told us it was just about the only house on the mountain where you could walk out back and step into a stream. We all fell in love—each for our own reason. We fell in love with the woods, and we fell in love with the house. And yet, we also knew it wasn't big enough for two large families. Joyce was the one who had the idea of adding on a few rooms.

"Adding on a few rooms" turned into a major renovation effort. We expanded the kitchen, doubled the size of the family room, added a new deck, and of course added two new bedrooms, including a second master. Joyce worked with an architect and a builder to design a larger, more functional kitchen. Kenny bought a killer entertainment center with surround sound. For over a year, everything was about "the Wintergreen house."

But in the end we knew we had done the right thing. We had the right house in the right location. And now at last we are ready to share it with you. We hope you'll have the same experience we had when we first stepped into the house by the river. We hope you'll fall in love.

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