Road Trip Recap: Minot, North Dakota - November 8-10, 2013

Last weekend my best friend, Santana, and I drove down to Minot for some shopping and to celebrate her recent birthday.

I'm going to stop myself right here, because it feels so strange to refer to her as 'Santana.' Yes, it is her real name, but I call her Tann, which is short for Tanner, which is what I thought her name was until I was somewhere in the range of 8-10 years old. Yep. I have known her since I was born (literally - our moms were pregnant together and Tann came out exactly 6 weeks before me) but I did not know her real name until then. EVERYONE called her Tanner, so that's what I thought her name truly was. You learn something new everyday.

Anyway, Tann and I have known each other since we were born, but other than the year and a bit that we lived in the same small Saskatchewan town when we were first born we have never lived in the same city. Even the year that Tann spent going to school in Saskatoon. I spent that year living in Muenster. Some sort of cruel trick, if you ask me.

So, Tann and I wanted to go on a shopping trip. Partially because Tann never shops (and I always do) and partially because we realized that we have never been on a road trip together! We have always had to make road trips to see each other over the years, so I guess a road trip together just never really happened. Even this time, I drove down to Regina to pick Tann up before we headed off across the border south of Regina.

We had a blast, and did a lot of shopping. Tann more so, but we both left with excessive bags and large dents in our bank accounts. We had originally thought we would want to go out both nights, but on the Friday night we realized that we just wanted to get some dinner and go to bed after driving the whole way there. The drive was about 4 hours from Regina, so I had another 2.5ish before that from Saskatoon. We were just tired and wanted to get rested up for our big day of shopping on Saturday.

And what a big day of shopping it was. We got to the mall bright and early and stayed there until almost 5 pm. Even though I'm a major shopper, I never do that. We pooped ourselves out so much that Tann told me "I wouldn't be upset if we decided not to go out," and I nearly grabbed her and hugged her because I had been thinking the exact same thing, but didn't want to be the boring one. After dinner and a bit of relaxing we hit some of the nearby box stores before calling it a night.

Shopping, Round One

Shopping, Round Two

On Sunday I got up bright and early to head to Mass at Our Lady of Grace parish which was a short drive from the hotel. After Mass Tann and I checked out of our hotel and went for a drive around Minot while we waited for stores to open at noon for some last minute purchases and returns. We finished up around 3:30 pm and then hit the highway back to Saskatchewan.

It was a really quick trip but I had a lot of fun spending some much needed time with Tann. The long drives allowed us to catch up on our lives and to reminisce about times we've had together. Since we don't often spend time together I really appreciate the moments that we do.

What sort of trips do you take with your best friend?

P.S. It's strange that I call Santana 'Tann' because I usually refer to people in their full name. Daniel instead of Dan, Benjamin instead of Ben, Elizabeth instead of Liz… It's just what I do. What about you, do you use full or shortened names?