Your hosts Lane McClelland and Laurie Roberts

Since the beginning of our coupleship, our lifestyle choices have included lots of animals, more nature than neighbors, a place to create and direct access to trails from our home.  

Our first property was in Descanso which had a picturesque stone building and barn.  After the first year, a failed business forced us to get creative with ways to pay the mortgage so we rented out the houses and moved into a tipi.  This canvas tipi I sewed in my living room, based on a pattern left over from my commune days. 

Within a year, we fixed the barn up enough to live in and learned how to build with strawbales.  Soon we had built a beautiful, quirky, little hut we called the Haylapa House, which we started renting.  It became very popular and was featured in newspapers, magazines and the book " The Strawbale House". 

In 2013 we sold that property - wanting to be even farther from town - and we are now blessed to live at the base of Mount Palomar in a 1940's adobe home, sharing a property line with Cleveland National Forest.  Here we created a glamping site called Camp Ribbonwood, gambling that people would be interested in staying in a safari tent.  This was before "glamping" became popular, and has been a surprising success.  After 7 years, we still find it very heartwarming to read our guest's comments about how relaxing and revitalizing it was for them to spend "unwalled" time in nature.
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Fast forward to 2018, we had been looking for another property to create a small, private nature retreat venue for individuals and groups.  We are happy to have found the perfect location in Chihuahua Valley (Warner Springs), and we feel great blessings in being able to share this special place with others.

Camp Hosts Rachael and Pat Crann

Pat and Rachael Crann, your hosts here at Birdsong, come all the way from Ohio. When not looking after the visitors of Birdsong, they can often be found hiking, birding, reading, doing yoga, baking, and cooking. They are joined by their one year old pup, Ursa.
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