Tuesday, June 8th Fond College Memories Smithville, TX to Abilene, TX

We were supposed to leave early… but of course it didn’t happen.  I wanted to get further than Abilene on our first day - Abilene is only 4 ½ hours away.  But that didn’t happen and we ended up in a roach motel in North Abilene for the night.

I hadn’t been to Abilene since I graduated 6 years ago.  So before we saw anything else, we drove to the McMurry campus.  Walking around campus was a surreal experience.  Things had changed.  There were new professors’ names on the doors.  There was a new clock in the quad.  There were a couple of new buildings.  And all that had been the Indians was no longer.  A couple of years ago, the university gave up their mascot.  They had been the McMurry Indians since the beginning of the college in 1929.  But because of money and football and some other things I’m sure I’m not aware of, McMurry chose to have no mascot.  It’s a little sad really.  As far as I understand, the university is continuing to try to recover their Indian mascot.

After boring Greg with fond college memories (I don’t know, maybe I wasn’t that boring), we met up with a college buddy to reminisce some more.

One of the high points of the day was our visit to Redbud Park to see the prairie dogs.  Again, it was one of those fond memories from back in the day.  Greg absolutely loved the little guys (he’s fond of furry rodent things).

Cute little guys!

Cute little black tail prairie dogs

Gnawing on some grass.

Thus ends Day 1 of our half cross country adventure.