Cabin on the Hill

I loved it here! My husband and I stayed here for our 5^th wedding anniversary. It was really nice to get away from the city life. We both want to come back, but this time with the kids! P. S. we miss Lester!

My son goes to college at SIU and this is where we stay EVERY time we go to Carbondale, 5 times now! We love the seclusion of the place and enjoy seeing all the farm and wild animals. The cabins are very comfortable and up to date with satellite tv service, comfortable beds, relaxing sitting area with overstuffed furniture and a fireplace. However, the best thing my wife likes is the hot tub! There’s nothing like a hot soak to loosen you up after spending a day running all over the place with our son. One of the best perks you get is you can request fresh eggs to be delivered to your cabin porch which you can make for breakfast in the fully equipped kitchen. HIGHLY recommend this place!

Please see our email correspondences with the owner in separate reviews, we were above the word limits in Unilocal.
My husband and I (and our German shepherd, Amber) first went to Cabin on the Hill in March 2010 and everything was great. This is why we went back for the second time during March 2012. Please note that we are publishing this review to share our experience, and not the experience of others. God knows we had a great time during our first time there. During the second time, that’s when the accusations started (after we had left the cabin, mind you, via nasty emails and not even a phone call). I think that the below email correspondences pretty much sum everything up. Sure, the cabin was great and so was the farm. But, if you have the pleasure to go on a vacation but then don’t want to come back home and deal with toxic emails from the owner (in addition to catching up things you have to do because you were out of the office), I would recommend you consider somewhere else. As a summary, we paid about $ 445 bucks for 3 nights of stay + taxes and fees. Of this amount, the dog is $ 15 per night. Apparently, the owner feels that even with charging the extra dog fee, it’s too much for her to clean up after the dog (especially dogs that shed). I feel that our emails to the owner were generally polite and considerate, but the tone of the owners’ emails is up to your interpretation. I really could have done without the grief coming back from a vacation. The owner started out stating we misused her hottub (which she did not give us proof of) and then went on a tantrum about other things. I’m not a professional cleaner but we did our best to clean everything, even swept all the hair we could spot. The last I checked, they charge $ 120 per night (140 during the weekend), plus $ 15 per night for the dog, and that makes it $ 135 or $ 155 per night. Don’t they take into consideration that they need to do some reasonable clean up after their guests or do they basically just want to do as little work possible while still charging you a standard rate? Running a business requires a profit and expense calculation, which means the cost of running a business needs to be considered. If you don’t like to clean, hire a cleaning service. I’m sure (especially in Southern Illinois where there is a very low cost of living) a cleaning company would be happy to get $ 45-​$ 60 for a couple hours of cleaning. We pay our cleaning lady $ 80 for 6 – 7 hours of cleaning and she comes once a month (and that’s in the Chicago burbs — high cost of living). The owner’s comments state she only spends one hour total to usually clean the cabins after somebody leaves. I’ve been to hotels where my room is cleaned daily for 30min and a hotel room probably has 20% as many things to clean when compared to a cabin. If they think they can spend 1 hour cleaning a hot tub, 2 bedrooms, a bathroom, laundry room, kitchen, porch, etc., it makes me question how clean they left it for us in the first place. We didn’t do an inspection upon arrival, but now we know that we should have. Oh well, Cabin on the Hill… We loved the cabin, but the owners could be a little nicer with how they communicate their frustrations. Again, in her email she talks about 9 years of dogs destroying her cabins, and I guess that’s now our fault because our poor dog left some hair in her cabin. By the way, the owners have a white dog that runs around the yard loosely that could have pooped on the property. We are not saying that their dog did such but it could have been a possibility. Did our dog destroy anything, do anything wrong, or cause any disturbance? No. Did the owners? Yes!