My friend Ruthie and I met when we had the same first day of work nine years ago at The American Red Cross, her in development and me in communications. We started in September and for Halloween just a month later, I asked her if she wanted to dress up as Laverne and Shirley. I was pretty psyched when she said yes, and more so when I found out on Halloween day she had never even seen the show. This girl was fun and impressionable.

We’ve schlemiel/schlimazel-ed our way through her engagement, the arrival of my daughter, the wedding, about four million new jobs between the two of us (mostly mine) and now, Ruthie becoming a Mom herself to a baby boy, also welcomed through adoption.

With all this life, the scales finally tipped for a while before we realized we had gone far too long without some quality time together. We needed to make up for a few dozen phone calls lost to now each having our own child yelling from the backseat on the drive home from work these days. Soon I realized Canton, Texas, First Monday Trade Days, a flea market held on the weekend that holds the first Monday of the month, was calling our name.

I love this trip because it’s just far enough to feel like you road tripped out of town but extremely doable in one day. I’m all for extended time away from the fam, but adding hotel rooms and goodnights on FaceTime always brings a few more layers of logistics. When I tell myself I’m too busy for just one full day with my friend, I feel like I’m really acting a little self-important that the world can’t turn without me, you know?

Canton is the perfect girls’ day formula: very easy country drive filled with wildflowers, no place to officially go or be, folding tables with mountains of visual inspiration for new conversations, and tapping into our intuitive need to hunt and gather. We’ve done a couple of great spa days together, but I thought this was so much more fun and economical. It was one of the best days of our friendship ever.

Before you go:

Bring cash, more than you think you need (but not a dime more than you’re actually allowed to spend, if you’re me). ATMs are scarce and have fees, and not only does cash help negotiating but generally this is an experience still left untouched by digital payment methods.

Don’t knock the value of the little carts the veterans pull behind them. I did, until I got home and had to massage the imprint of roller skate laces out of my shoulder from where they dug into me while being hauled on my back – more on that later. A folding wagon is coming with us next time. I even brought large reusable shopping bags but forgot them in the car when basking in the glory of a day without being responsible for everyone else’s belongings.

The hardest part of feeling like a trip to Canton was successful (re: the huntering and gathering at least) is knowing where to start, as the grounds are actually bigger than they look. The main pavilions have more mass produced items. (Most of which, by the way, includes phrases acting as a very intense reminder that a lot of these fine people don’t…vote like me, which I, surprisingly, seem to be more accepting of based off what they are willing to print on t-shirts and hand paint onto reclaimed wood signs. So, no harm here but – you’ve been warned if reminders of a divided nation kill your vibe.)

To get the “best junk,” bypass the main entrance to the trade days and head to the back of the Canton Civic Center, taking Flea Market Road off of W Dallas Street to the RV park. The blue building by the parking lot has the cleanest restrooms.

This is how Google Maps should take you from Dallas to the Promised Land.

From then it is really just on like Donkey Kong. Ruthie decorates like her house is on Fixer Upper and I decorate like my house is on Clarissa Explains It All, so in terms of being pleased with the decor offerings laid out for us, we’re fishing in a barrel. All gold as far as the eye can see. Vintage red firetruck ride-in cars for dapper young babies for her. Flintstone’s 30th anniversary commemorative glassware commissioned by Hardee’s for me. Of course I got the glasses. I mean, what better way to remember my love for Hannah-Barbera shows and my Dad taking me to Hardee’s every day when my Mom signed me up for both public school and Catholic school kindergarten. He ordered a double cheeseburger with large curly fries and a strawberry milkshake, then turned to me at age five and said, “What do you want?” like I even knew life outside what my Mom put in front of me. I said, “Uh, the same.” And ate that for lunch every day with my Dad for the year.

Sorry to digress, but these are the types of stories you get when enjoying a day on the scenic route.

One thing out in the fields that kept stopping us where those “tacky in a way you want to participate in” metal yard decorations. We were admiring a vendor’s space when I literally said, “I always look too closely at these groupings thinking the perfect one is going to find me.” And I found her, a weird stand-alone red and white mushroom, just like the ones I painted on my walls in college. Where trust me, I had a ton of friends (sarcasm font may be applied).

This was love. But I wanted to say I got a deal to enhance the story, so I had to haggle and then do the walk away move. So we went forth.

My best find of the day were these vintage roller skates in exactly my size for $3. We just got a new bike trail behind our house and I will be “that person on rollerskates.”

Ruthie has a good eye. She spotted this guy, and he had gorgeous handwoven baskets and other items. Ruthie and I keep a pretty big/little sister dynamic despite a slim age difference, just because she is so wildly accepting of my bossiness and unsolicited advice (thank you KRUB you are the best). But then she will pull something super grown-lady-ish, like picking out a nice handwoven basket for buying fresh produce from her special farmer’s market vendor, Omar, and it’s like, who’s raising who here?

Father’s Day is just around the corner…

In the end, we walked and talked, got just the right amount of lost and went home filled with finds sure to completely enhance our life. Including my metal yard garbage twin flame.

But mostly, we just had the best time together.

Here’s the deal, for me at least. Us emotional laborers used to get together regularly and just listen to each other’s real stuff: quilting, bridge club, walking over to each other’s houses. I know it still exists, but sometime the pace of life these days doesn’t make it happen, at least for me. Standing get-togethers and girls’ weekends become lunches, lunches become coffee dates then keeping up on social media, phone calls become texts. By the end of a full day as we sat over our not-to-be-missed bison burgers and fries at the neighboring Dairy Palace, we were way out of the highlight reel that conversations can so easily stick to these days. We both promised to do it again ASAP, knowing our husbands and children could not only handle themselves but also appreciated our friendship and the treasures we so dutifully source for our homes.

On that note, has anyone been to Round Top?