Retreat + Road Trip (pre-quarantine)

Do you all remember what life was like a month ago, before quarantine began? During the last full moon, I was heading to California for a self-guided wellness retreat in the woods near Yosemite with my friend Brooke, who owns one of my favorite cafes in town, Please & Thank You.

We booked The Forest Retreat House for four days.

We ate lots of cheese and trail mix and drank SO much tea. We rested, sauna'd, journaled and meditated.

We got lost in Yosemite, but had a waterfall as our guide. We ate weird pretzels and brambleberry pie at an unexpected hotel in the park...a hotel that will likely inspire future projects for us in the future.

I was so charmed by the Ahwahnee Hotel!! I had no idea it was there and it was so majestic!

We had limited cell reception and were not paying attention to our phones on this trip. The day we were supposed to leave, things ramped up with COVID-19, and rather than flying out of California (since there were so many reported cases there already, we got scared and DROVE HOME ACROSS COUNTRY.

Interstate 80, somewhere in California…

Somewhere in Nevada...

Road trip entertainment…

Driving towards Utah…

A night in Salt Lake City…

Will stop for pastries!

On to Denver…

Helper, Utah

Glenwood Springs, Colorado

MADE IT to Denver. We stayed one night at the Halcyon in Cherry Creek.

Lunch at True Food Kitchen before heading to Kansas City.

I didn't take any pics of the drive from Denver to Kansas, but it was really pretty - much prettier than I expected. Very flat, but textured. The clouds were so low, because of altitude (?) and it was so neutral! Ya know I love neutral...! We ended up doing a night in Kansas City at 21c, a hotel we know so well!

Before we left KC, we grabbed coffee at Monarch, an amazing recommendation we got from a friend.

Three days later, it was finally starting to look like home. The drive from KC to Louisville felt very familiar.

And, even though we DROVE home, we ended up back at the Louisville airport, because my car was there, lol.

It was really weird driving home to a place we knew was already different. We both had moments of panic- how will two business owning moms make it through this with kids out of school? This was before restaurants closed. This was before we really knew what was to come. But, here we are. Both of us are ready to adapt and bring more inspirational energy into the world. We both started business in a recession and aren't scared of what comes next...

But mentally, I'm still standing right here.