Travels through Texas and Oklahoma

Well, this is one of my few blog posts that is not about Nathan! I spent the last five days on a whirlwind trip through Texas and Oklahoma, traveling for work on a college fair tour with all of the schools featured in the Colleges That Change Lives book. Since I had a little fun planned as well, I decided to bring my point-and-shoot camera and document my trip. This experience made me realize just how nice my SLR camera is!

On Friday I flew into Houston, and met up with one of my best friends from high school, Jennifer, and her family at the Astros game. Minute Maid Field is gorgeous, and there was almost no action in the game until the 8th inning, which gave Jenn and I some time to catch up on each others' lives. After the game there was a great fireworks display. Sooo much fun!

Baseball!


Jennifer and her son, Blake, who will be 3 in December.


Mmm... yummy ballpark food! Brooke (5, who will be a big kindergartner next week) and Blake dig in to some treats.


Friends since 8th grade!


Waiting for the fireworks to start.


The Astros won 4-1!


The stadium has a really cool retractable roof. It was closed for the game since it was 115 degrees outside, but opened for the fireworks display--here it is halfway open. So neat!


Fireworks!


Saturday morning I woke up early, did some Pilates, and then worked from 8:30-noon at a very busy college fair. Immediately afterward, I hopped in the car along with two colleagues, one from Emory & Henry College and one from St. Olaf College. We drove like mad to Austin, and our mission for the drive was to eat lunch at a local, non-chain BBQ joint. We absolutely achieved this goal with the discovery of Clyde's BBQ Shack and Casino. We got to meet Clyde himself, who was a really cool character, the food was out of this world delicious, and the building was a work of art, built by Clyde himself!



I arrived in downtown Austin with just enough time for a quick run on the treadmill before another three hours of busy college fair activity. Here is the view from my hotel room on the 24th floor--so awesome!



After the fair, 14 of the reps walked a few blocks for some dinner at the Austin institution: Stubb's BBQ. All I have to say is YUM. The service was great, the food was amazing, and the live music was good as well. It was well worth the walk, which was in 103 degree heat at 10:30 pm!

The next morning I got up bright and early and had breakfast with my good friends Mike and Revell. I know they are good friends for many, many reasons, but one of them is definitely that they were willing to get up at 7:30 on a Sunday morning to have breakfast with me! Unfortunately I left my camera in the car, so I don't have any pictures, but it was wonderful to catch up with them and to meet the newest addition to their family, a basset hound mix named Tula.

After breakfast it was on to Dallas for another college fair, another group dinner and another exhausted bedtime! Monday morning I got up and drove from Dallas to Tulsa. The drive was really pretty (lots of rolling green hills) if a bit deserted. Another quick workout and another college fair filled up the afternoon and evening.

A photo of the college fair action as it was winding down. Luckily I was too busy at the height of the action to take a photo--a good problem to have!



I woke up at 3:45am on Tuesday morning to catch an early flight back home. SO happy to be back!

Here's a really terrible picture of the Mississippi river from my airplane window.