Russian River Getaways — Local services in Guerneville

Thanks to the incredible ineptness, audacity, and, quite frankly, rudeness of the Russian River Getaways staff, my husband and I will never again rent our favorite cabin, Blackberry Bliss in Cazadero. As importantly, I will be sharing our recent traumatizing experience that compelled us to depart the cabin only 24 hours into what we reserved as a 4-night stay, with the dozens of people I have referred to Blackberry Bliss, we long as it remains under the management of Russian River Getaways!

The first morning of our recent stay started gloriously. I had just gotten out of the hot tub on the back deck, and my husband was preparing to take my place in it, when suddenly a strange woman appeared on the back deck, uninvited and unannounced. Because the back house to the deck is all beautiful window, it was no different than having a strange woman walk through your living space, since the deck is designed to be an extension of the cabin.

Alarmed and defensive to have a stranger enter our space, we of course confronted her. She was there for routine maintenance of the hot tub. Despite our outrage that she didn't use the front door, that she didn't attempt to announce herself in any way, that we didn't appreciate nor welcome her presence during our private space and time, she completely ignored our concerns with absolutely no appropriate regard or response. Unbelievably, she just said she had a right to be there and scolded us for having the cover off of the hot tub! She entered our space through stairs on the side of the cabin with a sense of entitlement, offered no apologies, and would not leave at our request.

If that experience wasn't jarring enough, the response from Russian River Getaways staff when we called to share our shock and anxiety that a service person was allowed to impede on our privacy without notice or welcome, was to scold US because we had "upset" the hot tub service person. They were completely indifferent when we told them were departing immediately and, despite my request to communicate the property owner (who I have met, and who is a lovely person), they would not allow it. We have not received any apologies, nor any offer to refund us for any portion of the 3 nights we did not use as a result of this experience.

Blackberry Bliss is lovely cabin, and I will miss future stays. It was a place for us to completely getaway from people and reconnect with each other. As long as Russian River Getaways is managing this beautiful property, vacationers should just be aware of concerns for privacy, safety, and horrific responsiveness from their staff and the people they hire to service...

We had an interesting experience with Russian River Getaways. I would encourage you to read reviews and then decide if it sounds like vacationing with them is the right choice for you. Recently I was a guest of a friend that booked a Russian River Getaway through Airbnb. While the place is lovely, we had a very disappointing experience with both the place and the hosts, and, in the end the hosts honoured our requests and compensated us appropriately. But it took a lot of wrangling, and they did not make an offer until we posted our experiences publicly. Here is what happened to us: We arrived Saturday evening, and woke up Sunday morning to no power. In fact, the power was out all day, until well after sunset/dinnertime. This specific area has no cell phone reception, so we had to drive a distance to find access to wifi to contact the hosts, which we did. We could neither reach them, nor heard back from them until 16 hours after the power was back on. They claimed their office was out too, and, waiting an additional 16 hours after power is back to connect with us is inappropriate. If we could find a way, a host most certainly ought to be able to as well. In an area that has no cell reception, and recently experienced significant and damaging floods, we found this negligent and outright unsafe. We had to contact airbnb support, who contacted our hosts, to finally have them respond to us.

After a back and forth with airbnb support, the hosts were unwilling to offer what we considered to be a fair compensation, so we were left with the minimum offered through Airbnb's rules and guidelines. Afterwards we called PG&E and found out there are frequent "emergency outages" in this area. Our time was limited, some of us flew in from out of the country for this weekend, and we left very disappointed with the experience. Especially because we all use airbnb frequently, and some of us are hosts ourselves. All this to say, after extensive back and forth with both airbnb, and the hosts, we posted our experiences publicly and found in our inbox an apology from Russian River Getaway, with a very fair compensation offering. I am not sure I would choose to stay with them again, and, I feel grateful and more comfortable with their management and the choice they made in their dealings with...

We had an amazing week at Moondance! HOME: This is a beautiful home, with an open floor plan and lots of space! Plus many outdoor seating areas to enjoy. The tech is this house is better than our own home. Reliable and fast Wiifi, Siri in every room and we enjoyed having great music - just by asking 😊 Upstairs bedrooms and bathroom updated, roomy and very nice – Our teenagers loved having upstairs suites to themselves 😊 Also, fans provided to bring in cool evening air and worked really well. Good sized closets with plenty of hangers. The kitchen had everything you can possibly need, and the downstairs bedroom and bathroom were perfect for us. We were very comfortable in this home. The huge game room was an extra bonus.

RIVER: The river is tranquil and beautiful. I truly enjoyed having my morning coffee watching the ducks and egret each morning. There are lots of ways to get out on the water (two kayaks, two canoes, inflatable inner tubes). It was so nice to have our own private dock and easy access to this river! (Oh, and water perfect temperature!) There is a small current in front of the dock (which made it challenging to get started at first with the canoes - - until we figured it out!) Since the water is shallow, we would just walk a few steps out of current and very easily canoed from there (go to your right and it is super easy). We found the canoes to be easy to maneuver and really enjoyed going out with our teens. We even saw 2 sea otters from a distance, There are lots of areas where the water gets a little deeper to swim also along the way if you are taking inner tubes out, or if you want to pull your kid behind you in the tube 😊 Because the water level is low, the river is slow and easy and safe. Perfect really. LOCATION: Excellent location. You feel as if you are far away, but you are close to everything! The beach, Guerneville, small and bigger towns. We even went Ziplining – about 20 minutes away, it was adventure! Also - It is a very easy walk to the cute little town of Monte Rio (walk on the back roads and takes about 10 minutes) DOGS: This house is so incredibly dog friendly with so many extras! We had a wonderful...