If y’all haven’t been following me on Instagram, that you don’t really know about the trip I went on last week. I went to a conference with A Girls Guide To Cars, which is a company that I actually write for. It’s all about empowering women and talking to women in the car community. We have articles for car reviews, especially because, let’s be real here, women sometimes look for something different that men wouldn’t even think to mention. For example, does a car seat fit perfectly in the car if you’re a mom? This company is a place for us women to come together and be part of a bigger movement. Anyway, I’ll be talking more about the conference, the cars we drove, and the Porsche Experience in later posts, but today I wanted to chat about some of the women I have either known for a bit, or women that I just met and became friends with. This post will be all about the adventures we had, which trust me when I say, they were interesting to say the least haha!
Make sure to check out the following posts from my fellow new besties to see what they had to say about our adventures:
Whisky N Sunshine
Raising Dick and Jane
Alright, let’s get into it! Each photo/set of photos will have a caption talking about the women and the adventures that we had.
From Left to Right (Back) Lillie, Dawn, Jana, Kitty
From Left to Right (Front) Me, Mary
On our very last day in Atlanta, before we drove over to Porsche, we had a little bit of free time so we decided to go to a filming location. For those of you Walking Dead fans, you already know where we are. We are at the Jackson Street Bridge which is an iconic spot for The Walking Dead. This is in the very beginning where Rick is seen on a horse and the camera is on the bridge looking down as he is going into Atlanta to see absolutely nothing but empty cars and no people. Once he gets into Atlanta he sees what has happened and how “walkers” aka zombies, have taken over. It was interesting finding this spot, because we literally got lost (we were in 3 separate cars) and had to park on the side of the road, because there’s no parking lots anywhere and of course, no room on the actual bridge to park. However, we all got there in one piece! Jana (the one with the purple hair) was actually my roomie Sunday night so we got to bond over being nerds and very similar people. So, I was happy to have at least 1 person I knew so far haha.
Early morning coffee runs to Starbucks in the Mercedes. I actually wasn’t feeling well this day. I woke up feeling really crappy, and I think it’s what started this feeling of something similar to vertigo. It’s been almost a week since, and I’m still not 100% back to normal. It’s a struggle bus for sure!
From Left to Right Teia, Jana, Me
On Tuesday night of the event, after we had the conference (which believe it or not, I actually spoke at which I was very honored to do, let alone even be asked to speak), there was a manager’s cocktail hour before dinner at the Doubletree in Marietta, which by the way, below are a few pictures from the hotel because it was so beautiful in there! No, this is not sponsored by them, but I do feel that they needed to be mentioned. Their facilities were clean and beautiful, their breakfast was delicious, and they served us dinner Tuesday night (at that long table pictured two photos down) that was absolutely delicious. For anyone reading this who is looking for a place to host a conference, there are conference rooms at this hotel. It was enough to fit out group of almost 30 people, and there was room for more. To anyone traveling in this area, if this hotel pops up on your list of places to go to, I highly recommend them!
Let me just tell you about my girl Kitty. Her actual name is Natalie, but she goes by Kitty, and personally I like Kitty better. If you ever meet her in person, you’ll see why. Well, her and I paired up for our drive from the first hotel, to the second hotel on Monday morning. We also made a pit stop at Target with our friend Jana, but this is the car ride where we truly bonded. We came up with the hashtag #makeAmericaEMOagain because we are both ex emo/scene girls. If you don’t know what those are, just look up scene girl from the early 2000’s lol. We talked about our love for the same music, how we used to go to shows, and we jammed out to some great bands like A Day To Remember. It’s crazy how a conference like this, where women from all over come together and become instant friends. I wish we all lived closer to one another because I truly think we’d be hanging out a ton. And y’all know how introverted I am, so for me to say that is a HUGE deal.
On Day 2, my new besties and I decided to go on an adventure. Since we are nerds (I really didn’t realize how big of a nerd I was until this conference lol) we decided to go to a few different filming locations. Mary hasn’t seen Stranger Things yet, but girlfriend was all ready to become part of the crazy group of ST fanatics and she has been educated on some of the parts of ST and she did say she would binge watch it when she got home haha. However, I give her props for agreeing to this madness anyway. Before going to these filming locations, we were off to Target (sooooo basic, WE KNOW AND WE DON’T CARE) to get matching shirts because, why not? The first spot we went to was the hospital from Stranger Things S3 where the Mind Flayer, decided to try and test everyone’s patience at the hospital and Eleven messed it up enough that it seeped into the grate and went back to it’s cave. Oddly enough, the hospital name was still covered, so we have this theory that maybe this isn’t the end of this hospital and that we will see it again in a future season of ST. However, that’s just a theory.
The next location that we went to wasn’t just for Stranger Things. The location has been seen in Stranger Things, The Walking Dead, Hunger Games, and Vampire Diaries. This was the rock quarry. Unfortunately for us, we couldn’t get any pictures because it’s a restricted construction zone. We were told that we weren’t allowed past the gate (although if a construction crew would have taken us down I would have totally rocked the shit out of a hard hat lol), and when we asked how they were able to film, apparently they had to get some licenses to even film in a small part of the restricted zone. However, the security guard was nice enough to let us pull over on the side of the road and take pictures at the gate. We could not see anything from the gate, but at least we were in the general vicinity of the quarry. Before we got to the quarry though, we kind of missed the turn and kept going and eventually found a spot to turn around in. We saw a guy going number one underneath one of the buildings. I’m assuming he thought we were going to pick him up or something because when we turned around in the parking lot I looked back and saw him put his hands up haha.
Now, I have a funny story about the way back. Of course, me being me, I had to use the bathroom. Because I drink so much water and coffee, I always need a bathroom. Well, this particular quarry was in part of a sketchy side of town so to speak and we found a gas station to stop at for me to go to the bathroom. Jana (the one with the purple hair) was my bathroom buddy. As soon as I got out of the car we were already approached by a few people asking us about the car (we were in a 2020 RAM, so obviously we were very noticeable). Kitty and Mary locked the doors as soon as we got out. Yes, it was THAT sketchy. We quickly went inside to go to the bathroom. While I was in the bathroom (for my ladies, you know how we squat lol) which was really disgusting, I see a centipede creepy crawling towards my shoe. I’m sorry, but anything with that many legs is gross. Instead of screaming and bringing even more attention to us outsiders, I did the next best thing. Now, mind you, I’m still going number 1 lol. I latched on to the handicap bar on the wall and picked up my foot. So I was basically peeing like a dog. As soon as I was done with that we were out of there like something fierce. Also, I have no regrets, I would have gone on this adventure again in a heart beat!
Once we were at dinner that night after this crazy day, Kitty and I were working on a little collage for us Stranger Things fanatics. So I came up with this collage but the bottom photo was just in black and white and she had the idea to make it more of a Stranger Things Upside Down Blue. We had to go back and forth a few times, because I had to also make it darker on my editing apps haha. This is what happens when you get a ton of bloggers in one general vicinity and everyone has different apps that others don’t (because some you have to pay for and if it’s not something I’ll use a lot there’s really no point to download it just for one photo). The below photo was the final one that we came up with. When you’re a nerd, this is what happens. I cannot wait to see these ladies again, and we are hoping to go on a road trip because that would be a ton of fun, especially because all of us are from completely different sides of the U.S.
xoxo Monica
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