Ten Crucial Days

When R and I received an invite to the wedding of our close friends' daughter, we decided to tack on some extra days and make a vacation out of it! Working son (M) and college son (J) didn't come with, so just us two empty-nesters flew into Newark yesterday. 

The air quality is so much better than it was a week ago!

Travel tip: Seats 48A/B on a Boeing 777-200 are great because there is no third seat in the row = extra room for economy price!

Nerd Olympics

R and I drove down to San Diego today to watch M and J participate in the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Pacific Southwest Symposium (PSWS). 

Engineering students from ASCE chapters throughout the region gather to showcase their technical skills and compete against other schools in events like Concrete Canoe and Steel Bridge. There are also non-technical events such as basketball. Guess who's participating in that one?! 

M is one of the project leads for UCLA Concrete Canoe. And since they haven't held an in-person conference for the past two years due to the pandemic, we wanted to see him paddle in his final year.

 

Will it float?

Island Hoppers

K is usually on her way to work by 7:00AM, so the boys got up early to take a pic with their cousin since we were flying to Oʻahu today.

After saying our goodbyes and packing up the rest of our stuff, we decided to head to the airport early, return the rental, and wait in the terminal until our 9:35AM Hawaiian Airlines interisland flight. 

Chasing the Sun

How did this happen?! While we did have the opportunity to travel a bit this year, 2018 was definitely a bust for visiting new national park units. *sigh* But at least I was able to collect some new cancellations for my "Passport to Your National Parks" and actually almost have enough to earn an award from the National Park Travelers Club for this year. 

Tomorrow we're taking a campus tour of UC San Diego. But since we're so close, why not re-visit Cabrillo National Monument (and get a stamp)?

Gold Rush

We're starting another round of campus tours, this time with J. Two years ago, he was dragged along when M was visiting the colleges he was interested in. I'm hoping J got enough of an impression of those schools last time so that we won't have to make many repeat trips. Since he doesn't have school tomorrow, J and I will be checking out UC Davis. (R was left behind to hold down the fort.)

Instead of driving up, we flew in to Sacramento this morning and spent the day playing tourist, starting out in Old Town.

College Shopping

M is now in his junior year of high school, so over the past year we have been exploring various colleges just to give him an idea of what each campus is like. Of course, the standard was set with the first one we visited - the University of Illinois! We have also taken tours of UCLA, UC Irvine, and Cal Poly. Since the boys had a four-day weekend for Easter, we left right after school on Thursday for the 5.5-hour drive up to Berkeley.

All-State Weekend

Do you know the way to San Jose?

We do, but a huge storm dumped several inches of rain throughout Southern California on Friday, flooding roads, creating sinkholes, and causing mudslides which had closed lanes on both of the freeways (US-101 and I-5) that we could take to San Jose. The three of us left just after 6:00AM on Saturday morning and decided to head up the 101, only running into scattered rain on the way.

Only three? M didn't come with us because he had flown to San Jose on Thursday to participate in the All-State Honor Band - thus the reason for our weekend road trip...

Hail, Alma Mater!

Since Champaign-Urbana is only an hour or so away from my parents' house, we decided to schedule a campus tour of the University of Illinois for M today. I was happy to see that the Bread Company on Goodwin was still in business, but they no longer make the cheese croissants that I loved to get when I was a student. OK, so it has been almost 25 years, but still...

I settled for something to drink from Espresso Royale next door instead.

The tour was scheduled to start at 10AM from the Alice Campbell Alumni Center. What a great facility to welcome prospective students to campus! The speaker from the admissions office gave a nice spiel showcasing all that the university has to offer. But we definitely didn't like her slide with the cost of tuition - yikes!

Facing northwest from the entrance to the Alumni Center,
with Illinois Street Residence (Wardall) in the background

Hail to the Orange!

From Dayton, we hopped onto I-70 and drove about 2 hours west to Indianapolis. Another 2 hours farther, and we were in Champaign-Urbana! It's been nearly 20 years since R and I have been back to campus, so we were eager to see what had changed (or not!) and to show the boys around. I just wish it hadn't been so hot today -- we could have walked around to see more!