Road Trip – heading West

On Monday morning, we left Abilene, heading North West to the city of Lubbock where Michael and I had attended university at Texas Tech.  It was great fun to pass the towns that we remembered so well….Big Spring, Snyder, Post and  Sweetwater (home of the Annual Rattlesnake Roundup).

We enjoyed passing gorgeous, green cotton fields and stately wind farms…..

We reminisced as we drove, remembering trips that we had taken and people that we had know during our 6 years in Lubbock.

We were reminded of the topography of the area, starting out with flat, flat grasslands and gorgeous blue skies…..

and moving into the Llano Estacado region with Mesas popping out of the ground like giant mole hills…..

We enjoyed seeing fields of pump jacks and the smell of freshly pumped oil…..

We arrived in Lubbock around 11:00 and headed out to find some of the places that were important to us when we lived there.  Unfortunately, our Church was no longer there, our duplex had been torn down for a retirement center to be built and I was unable to recognize the building where I had worked.   Oh well, you cant fight progress!!!

We continued on to the Texas Tech University campus, actually being allowed to drive onto the campus….something that we weren’t allowed to do when we were students!!

We had forgotten how pretty the campus was, with a Spanish feel to the architecture….

We visited the Biology building where Michael received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degree under the tutelage of Dr. Robert Baker.  We enjoyed a few minutes visiting with him in the same office that we first met him in…. 38 years ago!!!

We also visited the Business Administration building where I received my Bachelor’s Degree…..

….although it is now the Mass Communications Building.

We enjoyed taking photos of ourselves at the football stadium…..GO RAIDERS!!……

….and the Will Rogers statue……

We left the University and started the most fun part of the day…..a visit with some old friends over a two hour lunch.   We first met Bill and Gayle when we were all students at TTU and had re-connected over the last few years over Facebook.  They currently live in Denver but were visiting in Lubbock with family.   It was as if we had never been apart and we happily enjoyed our food and TONS of fun stories about our lives. 

It was definitely the highlight of our day!!

After lunch we got out the GPS to put in the address for our hotel in Clovis, New Mexico.  The only problem was that we had both forgotten to book a hotel!!!  Fortunately we were able to use our phone to find a hotel and headed on the last hour and a half of our trip.

We enjoyed passing thru the towns of Tahoka, Anton, Littlefield, Levelland, Muleshoe (one friend used to pronounce it Mul-es-hoe rather than Mule-shoe), Progress, Farwell and Bovina.

One of the things that surprised us were the freight trains….we NEVER see them at home.  Before the day was over, we had seen over 10 different trains criss-crossing the countryside…..

I am VERY happy with this photograph, especially as we were driving at 75 miles per hour at the time!!!

We arrived in Clovis, checked into our hotel, took a spin around the city and then retired to the hotel for an enjoyable night of relaxing and video watching.