I’ve found the best AirBnb in North Carolina. Perhaps all of the East Coast.

It is a tree house. On an eco farm. It does not have a toilet inside. It is perfect. My much choosier husband agrees, too.

I usually make the Hampton Inn Concord / Kannapolis my home base while traveling to the area for work, but since Matt joined me on this last trip down I decided to be a bit more adventurous in my lodging choice.

The two of us have been on an unintentionally epic search for the coolest, lush-yet-rustic accommodations since our first ill-fated farm stay for our first anniversary in August of 2015 (this was before the era of “glamping.”) We’ve stayed at an olive farm, in a Cherimoya grove, with donkeys, with chickens, in barns and yurts and school buses. We’ve enjoyed every one of these experiences, but without fail they’re always (at the minimum) just missing the mark of, “Wow. That was perfect.”

For example, the yurt had no fan and no screens, which made sleeping in a buggy organic field in July difficult. The school bus had all the creature comforts and some fun extras like a wood-burning fireplace, but it was basically just parked in the owner’s backyard. The cherimoya grove place was insta-ready, but the whole place shook when you walked. The farm-with-chickens (an important distinction, I think, because most chicken farms smell terrible) was charming, the muffins were freshly baked, but the water in the oversize claw foot tub? It smelled strongly of rotten eggs. I know a lot of farms are on well water, but that doesn’t bode well for a “luxury bath experience.”

The folks at Green Omnivore Farms in Concord, though, gamed out every possible downside and got ahead of them. The walk from the tree house to the eco-friendly composting toilets was about 50 feet. The owners provided four sizes of Wellies to make the walk easier. They also had full coverage bathrobes on hooks above the waterproof boots, so you could slip out in the middle of the night without rummaging around for something warm.

Inside the toilets they left small toiletry kits with everything from allergy pills to Zan-tac inside. There was a big container of lime to sprinkle in the hole, which seemed to help with odors and apparently helps speed up the composting. Someone turned a little space heater on overnight to keep the chill out. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still an outdoor toilet. But in any circumstance I can imagine, I prefer a sparkling clean, charmingly decorated, warm outdoor toilet to a dirty indoor one.

The showers? Is there anything better than an outdoor shower? Okay, fine, an outdoor shower with a heated floor. This place did not have a heated floor, but it did have a really fabulous rain-style shower head and the water heated up fast.

When you want to overnight next spring after a Cannon Ballers game, do yourself a favor and stay here.

Uncategorized airbnb travel tree house