Here’s Your EPIC CPAC RECAP.

Settle in, grab your coffee, y’all – because I’m gonna give you the low-down on all things CPAC from a Chicks perspective.

First off, Mock and I traveled from our respective homes to Reagan National airport – her from Indiana and me from Texas. Keep in mind that whenever I travel, it’s as if the Travel Gods are standing by – right on cue – to make my life a living hell on earth, and it usually takes me a full day to get anywhere – even if the trip should take just a few hours. This trip was no exception to and from, as I traveled about 15 hours to get from Texas to D.C. that first day. My trip home was equally as joyful.

I love traveling I love traveling I love traveling I love traveling.

I will say, the Gaylord Hotel and Convention Center in D.C. is BEEEEEEYOOOOOOOTIFUL. I highly recommend it if you’re in the area and you’re looking for a place to hang your hat. It’s like a little town within a hotel – you never have to leave, if you don’t want to. It’s that spectacular. Just LOOK at this place (and this pic doesn’t do it justice):

We hit the ground running on our first day with a “Chicks Summit” at our mothership – Radio America. The whole gang was there. Our big “bosses,” Mike and Rich, are more like our favorite big brothers than they are Actual Bosses. It’s truly obscene how much fun those dudes are. Our digital guy, TJ, is a genius who reminds us of Chris Pratt in so many ways. Our PR guy, Kenny, is the millennial-with-the-ridiculously-good-hair who can work a room like it’s noone’s business (truly a sight to behold) – he’s basically everyone’s little brother, so we give him all the crap, and he’s the best sport. Then there’s Jen, our sales-boss-lady, who has been a figure skater and a world traveler and a ski instructor and now she races horses, but she’s not cool at all. Nah. And last, but not least, there’s Vallen – our Producer – who is like a younger and way cooler and more gorgeous extension of us. She restores our faith in her generation, y’all, and I honestly don’t know what we’d do without her.

After our Chicks summit to figure out how we planned world-chick-domination, we went out with our team that first night and met up with our counterpart from Radio America, Sara Carter. Y’all know her – she’s a total badass and Actual Journalist. I’m sure most of you have seen her on Fox, where she does a lot of reporting on the border. Anywho, here’s an epic selfie of a bunch of us taken by Rich (Sara is in the pink skirt, because she was dressed up for an event-thingy while we shleps were in jeans that night):

And here’s a pic of just us and our “girls” (Jen and Vallen) at the hotel the next night (we clean up good):

It’s been 13 years since our last CPAC. After our Thursday summit planning world-Chick-domination, we spent all day Friday being “handled” by Good-Hair-Kenny and our RA team, doing interviews on Radio Row, and whatnot. And just so you know, this is what it looks like doing radio shows on the phone in-between those Radio Row hits, because GLAMOUR, y’all:

That night, we were given the opportunity to interview Vivek Ramaswamy. At first, we were told that we were going to be able to do two separate interviews – one would be a more “formal” interview in his suite at an invite-only party, where Mock and I would chat with him in front of a “live audience” for a few minutes, and then we’d have another chance to sit down with him two-on-one. HOWEVER, when we showed up to his suite on the 18th floor at the Gaylord, we experienced something totally different than what was originally anticipated.

Y’all. OMG. We get off the elevator, and it was as if we walked into a sauna. There were a ton of people walking toward us – FROM the party that was being thrown in his room – which wasn’t a very good sign. We continued to walk with our team, as if we were salmon swimming upstream, and when we finally made it to his suite, we realized that we were entering sheer chaos. People EVERYWHERE. A couple of people from our team went in to see what the deal was, and we quickly realized that we would be doing the interview in Vivek’s bedroom.

That’s what this looked like at first glance:

I meeeeean, look at this picture. We. Were. DYING:

But then Vivek came in, sat down on that leather chair, Mock and I interviewed him, and it was awesome. It was all totally professional (minus the whole bedroom thing and the party-going-on-in-the-next-room-thing and us being adjacent-to-the-only-bathroom thing), and we even got him to loosen up a little in the last ten minutes with some more personal, Chickified questions.

Y’all know how we do:

Stay tuned for THAT interview. Seriously one of our most memorable moments.

Of course, after that night, we had some more meetings on Saturday, followed by a day of sightseeing, foodie-ing, and more hanging out with our peeps in Georgetown.

This was at the Brandy Melville store (if you have a teenage girl, you’ll know what that is…if not? You can Google it):

And this was on the famous “Exorcist stairs,” because we’re TOTAL TOURISTS, y’all:

And we ate at HANDS DOWN the most fabulous little Italian restaurant in Georgetown:

In all honesty, we both were NOT looking forward to this trip. And in more brutal honesty, we quickly realized that CPAC seems to be on its last leg, unless someone breathes new life into it. It just wasn’t the exciting event that it used to be. But I will admit, we had an excellent time – and so much of that had to do with the people around us. We love our Chick squad so much.

Who knows – maybe we’ll go back again in another 13 years.

ONWARD!