What a difference a week makes! I was a mess the previous week and had to face a few more hot days and the queen's funeral but everything got better on Wednesday.
I got up early on Monday to watch the funeral but not early enough. I guess I did my time math wrong because by the time I tuned in, the service was over and they were on the streets. I watched for a bit but gave up well before work started at 8:00. I thought I'd see some of the service at some point but never did find it. Oh well.
It was 101 degrees on Tuesday and we broke a record. As you know, I'm SO over the heat and wrote this summer off but breaking that record broke the heat too.
We woke up Wednesday to actual fall weather. At last! Since I had the AC on until then, I baked a banana cake for work and frosted it Wednesday morning before driving in. I also fed all of the feeding stations (Anne had asked me to cover hers) so was a bit late. Nothing new there. I had lunch with Layton and Steve at the Chinese buffet that was one of our standbys pre-Covid. I thrifted after work and found a bunch of yarn for Dottie then went home to the Survivor premiere. Now that's a good day on all counts. Yay!
I normally go to Connie's house in the Black Hills for her birthday every year but with her daughter and her family living with her, we had a plan B to meet in Sioux Falls, which is the only city roughly in the middle. It's a longer drive for Connie so I was only taking Friday afternoon off and we'd meet ~3:00. I had an audio book ready to go and hit the road right at noon, arriving on schedule and just a bit before Connie.
On my flight home from Rhode Island in August, I watched an episode of Diners, Drive-ins and Dives and they did Sioux Falls so we planned to hit several of those. Connie was starving after her drive so we went to an early dinner at Urban Chislic. It was delicious and a nice start to the weekend. Ice cream at a local dairy shop finished off our night.
After a lackluster hotel breakfast Saturday morning, we walked to Starbuck's for good coffee then headed to downtown Sioux Falls for shopping. It was fun going into all the shops, which I haven't done in years, and I found a few stocking stuffers. We wanted to eat at Bread & Circus for lunch and were told it was walkable but what a LONG walk. We shared 2 sandwiches - chicken (delish) and tuna melt (not so much) - and fries, which were delish. We then walked all the way back to the car, stopping at a couple of shops so it didn't seem as long. Then we headed to Falls Park, where we got our feet in the river. I ended up with a muddy butt but it was totally worth it. We ended the day with an Ethiopian meal and antiquing. Lovely.
Since Connie would lose an hour driving home (she lives in mountain time) and had a longer drive, we were leaving pretty early on Sunday. But first we went to Look's Marketplace for a yummy breakfast then hit Aldi before heading back to the hotel to check out. I was on the road before 11:00 and home at 2:00. This left me time to unpack, do laundry and even catch up on the last Ken Burn's holocaust episode.
It was a wonderful end to a great week. Cooler weather at last and a fun weekend with Connie. It doesn't get better than that. And despite having been all over Sioux Falls and in some beautiful locations, we took the only selfie of the weekend in the hotel parking lot. It's a great picture of great friends so the background is irrelevant. : )
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