I turned 29 (twenty nine holy smokes) at the end of February and to celebrate I took four of my BFF's up to Cottonwood and Jerome and we went wine tasting. ...cause if you had to guess really, what else would I do for my birthday other than drink wine? So we piled into one car on a Saturday morning and made the trek about two hours north of the valley.
We arrived in Cottonwood right in time for lunch (and lunch means it's socially acceptable to start drinking so yay for that). I was all worried about transportation because I've never been to Cottonwood and I wasn't sure how close all the tasting rooms were, like if you could walk to all of them, and I didn't want anyone to have to drive because then hello, then you can't drink as much wine but I didn't know if there's Uber in Cottonwood and there isn't because Cottonwood is like 3 square miles (I'm being dramatic it's bigger than that) but have no fear - there's a taxi service in Cottonwood, Arizona (I realize that was the longest run-on sentence ever but that's the beauty of a blog - no one's grading this).Yes, A taxi service. Singular. So we called her and she took us to downtown Cottonwood to get the party started. We asked her how late she works to make sure we had a ride back at the end of the day and she said "Oh yeah, call me and I'll make sure and pick you girls up. Maybe you'll be more talkative after some wine tasting." ....which is basically the understatement of the year.
So we had lunch at this place called The Tavern, shared a bottle of wine amongst the five of us, then walked to our first wine tasting stop - Fire Mountain Wines!
Stop #2 was a place called Pillsbury Wine Company.
Needless to say we were feeling pretty dang good at this point in the day...so good that we invited the guy sitting all by himself in the chair next to us to play Cards Against Humanity with us. He obliged and probably immediately regretted it. We also talked to the two elderly women sitting on the other side of us, who were BFFs and on a girls trip themselves, about all the places they travel together and how that's their "thing"...and then immediately we got all emotional and we're like "omg guys can that be us when we're 70 you guys can we do that can we grow old together can we be friends forever" You know, how drunk girls do.
It was clear that at this point in the day we were in definite need of some food, so we found the nearest pizza place, sat down and just started ordering pizzas...you know, how drunk girls do. Pizza in the belly, a little water in the system and onward ho to the next tasting room.
Our third and final stop, was the Arizona Stronghold tasting room. The wines were "eh" but I'm not gonna lie, that's probably because the whole time we were there it was a little bit of a blur.
It was only at this time did we really stop and add up all the wine we drank throughout the day. It was a lot. Enough to make me drunk text my husband. He's all working, fighting crime, being a cop stuff and his wife is drunk texting him. I'm so annoying.
I swear, he loves me.
After stop #3 we were smart enough to call it a day and call our cab back for a ride home.
While we were waiting, there was a man (possibly homeless but whatever) that walked by with a bird on his arm. Like, a pet bird. So naturally we're like "Look that man has a bird!" and then he came over and talked to us and let us hold his bird and then when I tried to give it back to him he put it on my head. And I was like, a bird whisperer or something, you guys. All of us were. We were wine-drunk, bird whisperers in Cottonwood, Arizona. New life skill for my last year in my twenties.
We finally saw our cab arrive after what felt like 30 minutes of waiting. And by "arrive" I mean drove right past. And then turn around only to drive right past us again. So we were left with no other options (obvi) other than to literally run after this minivan in the street (it's fine, there's not much traffic in Cottonwood) yelling her name because hello, how else would she know who she's picking up right? She probably saw us in her rear view and kept driving to get away from us but hey, we may be drunk but we work out ok? And we caught up to that minivan. ...you know, like drunk girls who workout do. Anyway, we requested a trip through Dairy Queen and she happily obliged. For that reason, we bought her an ice cream cone. Because people should be rewarded for transporting five wine-drunk girls in one mini-van. From there we ate our ice cream and serenaded her with Justin Bieber's Love Yourself because don't lie that song is the jam, all the way back to our hotel.
We finished our ice cream, ran around our hotel room for a while, drank a little more wine (oops), and eventually decided it was time to walk across the street to the gas station for Cheetos and some water. We all got the same gallon jugs of water, so to distinguish whose was whose:
Eventually we fell asleep, woke up Sunday morning, packed up, and headed up to go see Jerome! Jerome is a huge wine tasting area too, but since Sarah was driving us back home that afternoon and couldn't drink, the rest of us can't really drink either because we stand in wine solidarity. If one person can't have wine, the rest of us shouldn't either right? We cruised through the town, found a cool spot for lunch, then checked out all the cool shops.
Before we knew it it was time to head back home - always the worst part of vacations/birthday weekends/girls trips...but probably the best part of blog posts because you're probably like oh my gawwwsh she has carried on for toooo long with this post. Maybe so but, it was the best weekend I've had in a long time and so much fun (and wine) was had by all. If you wanna see Kailey's vlog of the trip check it out here.
If the first weekend of the last year in my twenties is any indication of how the rest of the year will go - it's gonna be a good one!
