My family doesn’t usually do anything special for the summer long weekends. It tends to be a typical weekend with family, that just happens to include an extra day to spend together. So, ever since moving to Peterborough, I have spent the July long weekend with Mollie because her birthday is July 2. We will typically go up to her trailer in Maynooth and spend the weekend having fun and celebrating. Usually her other friends will save their trip to her trailer for the Labor Day long weekend because it is a bigger celebration up there, but for Mollie’s birthday myself and Amy will usually be with her. I’m not sure if I’ve introduced Amy officially on the blog yet … I know I’ve mentioned her. However, if I haven’t, Amy, Mollie, and I went to Cambrian College together. She was initially Mollie’s friend, but Amy and I were cordial since we were used to spending Mollie’s birthday together. We recently encouraged Amy to get a job at the hospital and move to Peterborough with us. She did and now we’re the three amigos. The three of us spend a lot of time together.
Anyways, this year, Mollie was not a great terms with her family, so spending the weekend at the trailer surrounded by them all was the last thing she wanted to do. We decided that we would have a girls weekend instead. We tossed around ideas of going to New York, Las Vegas, and other big plan ideas. We settled on a more local option and decided to stay at an adults-only resort in Bancroft called Footprints Resort. It was a little expensive, but we each paid for a night. Mollie was able to arrange the schedule so that we could all get the Friday-Monday off. It worked out perfectly.
On Friday morning, I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I hadn’t finished packing and seemed to hate every bathing suit that I owned. I was driving around like a maniac to stores trying to find a bathing suit at the last minute, but my cheapness really hindered me finding anything. I eventually gave up and rushed home to finish getting ready before Mollie and Amy picked me up.
At around 11:30, they pulled up in Amy’s Jeep. They had opened up the windows and roof of the Jeep so that we’d feel like we were in a stereotypical girl’s trip movie (not actually, but that’s how I felt). I felt a little bad leaving Blake because it would have been one of the few weekends that we got to spend together, but it was Mollie’s birthday! I kissed him goodbye and off we went!
It took a little over 2 hours to get to Bancroft. We stopped at a pub-style restaurant and ordered a shareable platter and 3 chocolate milks. Standard adult stuff, you know. After a brief break, we headed over to the resort. It was a little hard to find because the resort prides itself on anonymity, so there were no signs to help point us in the right direction. Once we found it, we checked in, settled into our room, and then immediately got into our bathing suits and hopped into the hot tub.
Since it was still pretty early on Friday, there weren’t many people around, so we felt like we had the majority of the space to ourselves. The only other person that seemed to be around was a lone man that we decided to name Chris. He seemed to always be around and want to talk to us. He appeared to be alone, which seemed unusual; and it seemed like he would always pop up. It was like that for most of the weekend and it kind of became a joke. “There’s Chris again!” “Haven’t seen Chris in a while”....etc.
While we were in the hot tub, we were visited by a chipmunk that had obviously gotten used to being fed by the people at the resort. He was a little too friendly for my liking and would invade my personal space. Mollie named him Maurice. I did not like Maurice … and that dislike stayed strong throughout the whole weekend.
On Saturday, we spent most of the day on the beach. It started to get busier as the weekend progressed, but for now, it was still somewhat quiet. There was a couple at the beach that were the literal embodiment of “stoners”. They were chill AF and were smoking joint after joint while blasting their reggae music for all to hear. They also had a french bulldog that was cute, but, as far as we were aware, was not technically allowed to be there as stated in the resort rules. He would constantly bring the ball to us in hopes that we would throw it for him. At one point, while I was tanning my back, he snuck up and dropped the ball on my lounger. I was so startled, I jumped up and flashed the whole beach. Amy was the only one of us that didn’t have an embarrassing moment on the beach. At one point, I was listening to music and suddenly, I heard a weird sound and then laughing. I unplugged and turned to see Mollie, head first in the sand with her lounger sticking straight up in the air. She had reached out to get her drink and misjudged her landing causing her to take a head dive into the sand. Eventually Amy got up and helped her, but Mollie was in the position for a bit until Amy could get her composure to help her. That image will forever be ingrained in my mind. It was too funny! At one point, Mollie and I decided to kayak out to the dock in the middle of the private lake. I had never been kayaking, but it was fun! The dock had a slide and I tried to convince Mollie to go down it. By the end of the weekend she did, but not today.
Each morning we would make quite the gourmet breakfast of eggs, bacon, and homefries. The resort had a communal kitchen that had all the utensils we needed to cook. Sometimes we had to juggle having too many cooks in the kitchen, but it was fun. It reminded me of being back in college. It was a chill atmosphere. The resort also had BBQs that we could use and one evening we sat at the Tiki Bar while Mollie made us dinner.
Sunday was a gloomy day. Amy and I let Mollie sleep in while we headed down to the kitchen to make tea and sit outside on the patio. After a while, we went back to the room and we were surprised to discover that it was locked. It took us a couple of knocks before sleeping beauty woke up to open the door. Amy and I put on our swimsuits and hopped into the hot tub on the chilly day for a little bit. At one point, we even got into the pool which was practically the same temperature as the hot tub (about 90 degrees). We spent most of the day in our room talking non-stop about anything and everything. The hours flew by very quickly.
Every night, we would watch a movie on the TV that hung at the foot of Mollie and I’s shared bed. Every night we would choose a movie that Amy would want to watch … and every night Amy would fall asleep halfway through the movie. We threw it back with some classics like The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
On the final day, we tried to make the most of the time we had left. In the morning, Mollie and I walked down the deathly steep stairs that ran alongside the resort and lead down to a dock that extended out to the middle of the lake. We had plans to spend time drinking our morning coffee/tea down there, but when we walked out onto the platform, Mollie saw a snake and that was it. We trekked our way back up. Instead, later on in the day, the three of us decided to canoe out to the dock with the slide. It was the only place that the sun was shining, so we decided to tan out there. At one point, another resort visitor swam over to the dock. He encouraged Mollie to down the slide after he had done it. She tried to get Amy and I to do it, but it was a no-go for us. It was a fun way to end the weekend together.
Before we headed home, we decided that we would take one group picture, just to commemorate the weekend. I’m relatively confident that neither one of them reads my blog, so I’m going to post this ONE picture of us together … and hope that neither finds out and gets mad...because we all don't look our best.
Here we are! … we didn’t realize we were all matching until after the picture was taken. Proof that we spend WAY too much time together! I look forward to this becoming an annual tradition and I can't wait to make more memories with these two lovely ladies.