Road Trip

A girl's only road trip that is because no men or children would want to go on this trip! My aunt Cher and I headed to Fort Wayne, IN Wednesday night, stayed in a hotel and got up bright and early (not too early) Thursday morning to hit the Vera Bradley Outlet Sale at the Coliseum. Erin and I had been 2 years ago and had a good experience, but Erin opted out of going this year and appointed me her personal shopper at the sale instead. Upon arriving at the Coliseum at 8:15 am we could see the line wrapped around the building, and down a few rows of parking. We hopped into line and waited outside in the parking lot for 1 hour and 15 min (thank goodness for good weather)before we got into the building and directly into the sale. By the time we were in the line outside was probably double what it was when we had arrived. Controlled chaos is what I would call the inside environment, either that or CRAZY! Of course the anything in new patterns was snatched up by those who got in first, but the selection was still pretty good for most items (barring the ever-popular large duffel and the hipster). My aunt and I had our own lists as well as each other's lists memorized so we went with the divide and conquer method of shopping and met up again when we were done. We got tons of great stuff and for half of what it normally is! After sitting down to sort we were still looking for a few items - hipsters for myself, Erin and my cousin Rachel and a large duffel bag for my aunt. So we went "dumpster - diving" in a way and started sorting through the bins of stuff people had thrown aside during their sorting process; amazingly we found 4 hipsters in cute colors/patterns and at the very end in checkout my aunt found a large duffel in the pattern she wanted that someone else had tossed aside. We of course spent too much money but ended up with some great finds and deals! It was a crazy experience, but totally worth it and my aunt and I got to spend some quality time together through it all which was really nice!

Just one shot of the crazy lines outside (we were next to the building at this point and the line on the right of the picture ran the length of the entire Collesium parking lot)!

A shopping job well done!

All my great Vera Bradley finds!