It's Not About Where You Are, It's About Who You Are With
In a past blog I wrote about the cancelation of the girls weekend I was supposed to go on in June. Sydney, Charlie and Mallory and I planned to spend three days in the beautiful town of Lake Tahoe, but it was postponed due to the coronavirus. We all grew up in Sacramento, and Tahoe is only two hours east of our hometown. Lake Tahoe is actually in two states. Nevada is on one side and California on the other. We spent many weekends up there during high school, so now, 40 years later, it would have been the ideal place to reconnect. We would’ve made new memories, for sure. But I know we would have spent a lot of time reliving our high school antics.
For many years me, my fake ID, and my friends spent New Year’s Eves in Tahoe hanging out at the casinos. On the south shore of the lake, just over the border going into Nevada sits Harvey’s, Harrah’s, The Hard Rock. I call those times “amateur night” now, but back then I was a professional!
During the summer, we would go camping at several different places just outside Tahoe. (If you haven’t been to the Sierra Nevada Mountains, go! It is most definitely a trip you won’t regret.) Sometimes we would camp in campgrounds, but most of the time we would just go find a spot by a river or a creek and pitch a tent. We would make a bonfire, drink all night, look up at the stars, and in the morning we would fish for our breakfast. It was always a big group of us, guys and girls.
One time I got up early, caught some trout, came back and gutted them. I fried them up and used the leftover fish oil to cook the eggs. As I’m standing there at my propane-powered stovetop, I looked over and there was a 400-pound brown bear eating berries from a bush. He/she was probably about 25 yards from my outdoor kitchen. I am a huge animal lover so I just stood there watching it eat. Yes, I am the one to stop my truck to watch bald eagles fly, or talk to Phil the pheasant, or save a turtle crossing the road. But to witness a 400-pound brown bear eating berries was pretty rare and spectacular. I almost burned the fish.
We would also spend the Fourth of July on the lake. The coolest thing to do was sit at a window seat in any of the high-rise restaurants that had a view. A large barge would go out to the middle of the lake and at sundown and start shooting off fireworks. Here’s the cool part. Each restaurant would synchronize their music to the firework show. Back then it was awesome. Now it seems everyone does that so the novelty has kinda been squashed.
Shortly after Thanksgiving, sometimes on or before depending on snowfall, my friends and I would start our season of snow skiing. When I was 14, my 16 year old high school boyfriend Pat taught me how to snow ski at a small mountain up Interstate 80 called Boreal Mountain Ski Resort. He was a great instructor to help me with my first time skiing. He went down backwards with his skis in a V, mine were the opposite-they were in the snow plow position. From then on, I loved to ski.
Those days in Lake Tahoe were incredible and have provided me with a lifetime full of memories to recount. I wish Sydney, Charlie and Mallory and I could have gone back this year, but that’s OK, it’s fun now to make new memories, and that is what we started doing last year during our inaugural girls weekend trip to Santa Barbara. We had to substitute bears for pelicans and dolphins, but no one seemed to complain.
To fill the gap of our cancelled Lake Tahoe trip, I have invited Sydney, Charlie and Mallory to come visit here at my home, but I think it is still too risky to have anyone get on a plane. We will just have to wait until next year. Where will that be? Quite frankly, it doesn’t matter where we are because it is all about the love we share together rather than the surroundings we are in.
Where do you go on your girls weekends? Do you travel by car, by plane, by train? How many are in your group? I’m dying to know. Please email me at loopie@girlsweekendblog.com I would love to hear from you.
I love that you were with me today. See you tomorrow!
XO
Lisa A.K.A. Loopie