Maybe one day I'll take a typical girls' trip: you know, the kind where a group of friends or relatives go somewhere exciting like Las Vegas or New Orleans or even a spa for the weekend.
But so far, most off my off-duty travel with other women involves horse trips.
The past weekend, my professional horse friend (who raises, buys and sells horses that cost as much as houses) and I went on a good, old-fashioned road trip.
Now, I'm a longtime girls' trip proponent, but I am also experienced enough to know that sometimes girls' trips can go terribly wrong. That same friend who seemed like so much fun at the Bunko party starts driving you crazy after four hours of nonstop stupid talk poolside (OK, can you tell that actually happened to me?)
So I was really hoping that this trip with my horse friend would go smoothly. We started out – just two middle-aged gals in a deluxe pickup truck and a giant stock trailer — cruising through the great state of Texas on a Friday afternoon. My friend brought her little dog along and I have to say I'm green with envy that any animal could behave this well.
Things were fairly uneventful until we hit the major city where the sale was and hit massive traffic and rain (although you'd be surprised at how well people yield to a truck and trailer…) We checked out the prospects, where I pointed out the horse I'd like based on her soft eyes and gorgeous mane (my pro horse friend was not impressed…)
After some hilarious misadventures (we were pulled over by police for dragging an orange cone that we had hit earlier) and trying to park an enormous truck in tiny downtown slots, we ended up at our hotel around midnight. We were so tired that we found out the next morning we had left the key in the door.
After a huge, downhome-style breakfast, we went to the all-day horse sale which was fascinating (well, except that I kept sneaking out to go shopping in the aisles of Western vendors that had set up shop since it was also a livestock show and fair.) As I love and own horses but am nowhere near savvy enough to buy a horse from a horse sale, about the only thing I could add at the auction was sharing my fashion theory with my friend that riding a bigger horse actually makes your butt look smaller (go ahead and laugh – it's true.)
My friend bought some nice horses, she paid, we loaded up and decided to try to get as far home that night as we could. When we started running low on energy around 10 PM, we popped into Walmart for fudge-stripe cookies and caffeinated drinks.
Finally, around midnight we found a decent hotel and stopped for the night. We had ponies to water, so we used the bellhop cart to wheel out large buckets of water that we had filled up in the bathroom.
We both slept til 8 (something neither one of us ever does!) and then headed out to have another great breakfast before heading home.
This girls' trip didn't involve spas, significant shopping, luxury digs or even a drop of wine. About the craziest thing it involved was when an 18-wheeler was honking his horn like crazy at us. He pulled up beside us and started blowing kisses. Not at us. He was pointing at the truck.