American Honey: 5k4 Caitlin

This past weekend, Memorial Day weekend, some of my best friends and I traveled to upstate New York to run in a 5k for our sorority sister who was lost on April 16, 2007. One of my friends, McKenzie, and I participated last year so we were really excited to have two more friends join us for a girls weekend. We were so lucky the wonderful innkeepers Laura and Leigh at the Apple Valley Inn in Glenwood, NJ were so accommodating this year. Normally on a holiday weekend they require a two night stay and when they found out there was four of us they were a little reluctant to let us all stay in one room. Thankfully, they agreed to let us stay for one night in one room, I think because they liked the reason we were in the area. Even better, not too long after we checked in, they let us know they had a cancellation and gave us the extra room for FREE! To show our appreciation we had put together a basket of goodies from Virginia (wine, peanuts, chocolate covered Hokie peanuts, corn bread mix, honey, apple butter and crackers) which was a big surprise for them.

So after we checked in and had some time to relax on the beautiful lawn of the inn, we got ready and headed to the race. McKenzie, June and Joey all walked while I ran. It was a lot of fun and I came in second in my age group and beat my time from the previous year. I made sure to stick around the finish line to take pictures of the girls as they finished up the race. Thankfully the rain held off until the end of the race and while we waited for the weather to clear, we enjoyed some wine in June's car (keys in the glove box!).

After eating dinner, we settled down on the lawn of Bella Vista Holiday Spa to listen to some music and relax. It so happens that Caitlin's mom spotted McKenzie and Joey wearing their In Memory of Caitlin shirts and came over to talk to us. While it was great to talk to her, I think it was a lot more emotional than any of us anticipated. It's weird for me to talk about Caitlin and the events of April 16. For one, I had already graduated and was not on campus that day and second, I didn't know Caitlin very well as she was a freshman when I was a senior and our two classes didn't interact very much. I do have one memory of Caitlin from my senior year. It seems silly now looking back, but during one of our last sorority meetings, someone had put together a slide show of photos that left several of us in tears. Caitlin so thoughtfully handed me a tissue and I just remember thinking, she must think I look like such an idiot but she is so sweet to be giving me this tissue. So yeah, I have mixed feelings about how I should feel about the whole thing but honestly, it all makes me sad.

Anyway, after an emotional conversation with Caitlin's mom and a couple more glasses of wine, the music really got going courtesy of Johnny, Caitlin's neighbor and back up musician for musical greats Bruce Springsteen and Rod Stewart. He sang to us and we danced and had an amazing time. Around 10:30pm we decided to call it a night.

Before we left the next day, we took Caitlin's mom up on the offer she made the night before to come see Caitlin's iris. The iris is the official flower of our sorority and one of our sister's mom is a botanist. She created an iris for Caitlin which sits in a beautiful garden in the backyard of Caitlin's house. We enjoyed some of Caitlin's favorite tea and then, Caitlin's mom asked us to take some of her childhood books home with us. She said she really didn't want to give the books to just anyone and told us we had to "duke it out" to decide who got what book. Like me, Caitlin played the violin so I went home with a book about classical composers and a children's version of Emily Dickinson poetry.

Here are some pictures from the weekend!

Apple Valley Inn