Thursday, October 3, 2019
Twenty two years. It’s been TWENTY TWO YEARS since we took the first Girls’ Weekend trip to Minneapolis in 1998, and I can’t even imagine life without it. What a joy and a blessing to be able to have these wonderful experiences, and to share them as women who lift and love each other. Both of us started our day before the crack of dawn. My alarm rang at 3:15 in Indy. Lori drove from Salem to Portland on Wednesday to stay in a hotel so she didn’t have to have the long drive to the airport this morning. Both of us had connections: Lori flew through Salt Lake City, and I connected in Denver. I was supposed to arrive two hours before Lori, but after a couple of delays and an actual plane change, I ended up only arriving about a half hour before she was due to land. Rapid City’s airport is tiny though, so I still had time to get the rental car, load my stuff into it, then come back into the terminal to greet Lori with the hugest hug ever as she emerged from the terminal. Girls Weekend 2019 had officially begun!
We went out to the car, a sleek, shiny, brand new Nissan Maxima with only 31 miles on it, loaded the luggage, and set the GPS for our Airbnb. We arrived to find that it wasn’t quite ready, as we were several hours earlier than our check-in time. So we headed downtown to find some lunch. For the final leg of my flight I was seated next to a very helpful gentleman who was from Rapid City. After finding out I would be vacationing in his home turf, he first asked why on earth I was going to South Dakota in October, as the tourists were usually families, and only came during summer vacation. Once I told him about our annual trips, he took it on as a personal goal to make sure we had an extensive list of the best things to do and see while there. It turned out that across the aisle of the teeny tiny little plane was a woman who works as a tour director for the area. She told me that everything my seat mate had told me to do was solid advice and that she couldn’t have done a better job herself! So while waiting for the Airbnb to be cleaned, we decided to go to one of the recommended restaurants that both of my helpful personal travel advisors had recommended – Tally’s. It was indeed delicious: Lori had a delicious burger, and I opted for the lox plate which came with a fried egg as a bonus.
After finishing lunch we walked around the downtown area for a while and found a wonderful cookie bakery called Mary’s Mountain Cookies that offered fresh homemade dough to take and bake. We bought a tub of that and chatted for a while with a great gal who worked there. Just before 4:00 we went back to the Airbnb, which was ready. As we pulled up in front of the little house that we would call home for the next several days, Lori commented that she now fully understood why there were no exterior pictures of the place on the website. It certainly couldn’t be said to have any curb appeal. It’s a tiny little house that needs paint and some yard work. The driveway sports broken slabs of concrete and is so steep that when we pulled into it, the bottom of the car made a horrible screeching scraping noise as it was dragged along the surface. Thankfully, the inside of the house was quite fine, with a nice living room, a good-sized kitchen, two bedrooms, and a bathroom.
We unpacked and settled on the couch to catch up. I love this part of the first day of GW. The conversation flows back and forth and back and forth as we quickly update each other on whatever pops into our heads first. Our conversation follows a natural ebb and flow choreographed by the awareness of each other that a long relationship brings. Finally we realized it was getting late and we still hadn’t bought any food. We went to Target to get a couple of items, then to the grocery to pick up some food, and finally to the liquor store so I could grab a purely medicinal bottle of B&B for the stupid cold I picked up a couple of days ago, and small bottle of Bailey’s, Lori’s favorite.
Back “home” again, we checked in with the hubbies, snacked a little, sipped a little and watched a new CBS show called Evil, which is really creepy. I did not do a single bit of homework, for which I will surely suffer later, but that’s OK. For now, it’s Girls’ Weekend, we’ve been waiting a whole year, and this is what it’s all about.
We remembered that we had to toss the States to being the process of determining where we’ll go next year. Lori did the honors on this first night. We put all the states we haven’t visited yet in a bowl and Lori flung them in the air. More than half of them remained face up on the floor. GW 2020 will take place in one of the following places: Alaska, Arizona, Texas, West Virginia, South Carolina, North Dakota, Nebraska, California, Missouri, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, or Maryland. We went to bed around 11:30, excited to wake up and attach our first full day in South Dakota!
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