I went to this one shop hop only becasue a bus was chartered byt the organizers...in the past, it was by car only, which is not fun if you go by yourself. There were 8 shops that day and I got to meet a neat group of ladies. There were a lot of laughs on the bus between the stops. We also stopped at a nice buffet for lunch. Yes, I did spend a lot of money on great fabrics, bargains, etc. I found this book on piecing backings...one of my very best buys! It was fun, but I would not want to repeat it every year.