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Slow down. Look for the deer.

How the lodge got its name, and who looks after it.

The name

Trails of deer, everywhere

We closed on the house the first week of July 2021, and in our first week there the deer were everywhere: grazing in front of us, unbothered, whole families on the gravel road so that we had to inch our way home. It became a reminder to slow down and take in what is around us. “Stop, be still, and allow ourselves to enjoy the beauty created by God, visible all around us” (Psalm 46:10). The deer still come most days. One of them, Jackie, is the lodge’s mascot; if you are lucky she will visit.

Lora Williams

From the owners

We care, and we mean it

In more than thirty years of travelling we rented dozens of homes on Vrbo and Airbnb, and found very few we would have rented twice. We carried our own pillows, our own dog crate and boxes of cookware. Not one of those houses had a crockpot, a waffle maker or a crate. Windows had no blinds, neighbours kept us awake, doors didn’t latch, and every house lacked the attention of an owner who actually stayed there.

So when we closed on Deer Trail Lodge in July 2021, we set out to make it the house we had been looking for: comfortable beds, clean from floor to ceiling, a kitchen with everything in it, room-darkening blinds, gas fireplaces, central air for the rare warm day, a yard where a dog can run, and a creek on either side. We have spent hours cleaning, remodelling and reworking every corner of it, through 2025, and we stay here ourselves.

If anything is amiss while you are here, call, text or email and we will see to it straight away. We love this place, and we hope you will too.

Lora Williams

Owner, Deer Trail Lodge

Our own footage

Pulling in at Deer Trail

Past the sign, up to the house, across the deck. Filmed after the new landscaping went in.

Neighbours

Deer, bear, turkey and fox

Besides the deer, we have seen black bear by the creek, turkey, rabbits, raccoons, fox and groundhogs. A guest, Tanya, filmed a doe nursing her fawns in the road, and the bear came by twice in one week in August 2021. The bins at the street are bear-proof for a reason.

The Greenhouse Getaway

Also from Lora

The Greenhouse Getaway

Our second home is a new country house on an acre of gardens in Zebulon, near Raleigh, designed around wedding weekends: double vanities, a getting-ready suite, a screened porch and a glass greenhouse for the photos.

Visit The Greenhouse Getaway