Long story short, Riley wanted to visit Colorado Mesa University (CMU) in Grand Junction, Colorado. He found it on a web search looking for colleges with "good theater programs." What qualified CMU one is unknown, but it made it on his list of schools to visit.
We ended up booking the trip a few weeks ago, thinking that we didn't want to tell him no due to cost and didn't want him to make a decision without actually visiting. So we got up early on the 13th to get to the airport and make our way to Denver. I mentioned the drive on the previous entry, so I'll not mention it here.
After checking into our hotel, we decided to head downtown to take a look around, find something to eat. It turns out, the downtown portion of GJ was pretty small. The main drag of commerce and food was pretty much closed at 5pm or so. Not many restaurants that we could find. Was very artsy, though. The entire town was that way; lots of statues and art installations everywhere.
It was sunny and bright as we walked around, but quite windy and cool when the wind gusted up. Not much to be found in the way of food, so we drove around some more. As the car we had had no compass, I didn't know what direction we were going in, but I think to the west of downtown were some more modern areas with big box stores: Best Buy, Target, Walmart, Lowe's, etc. We saw a restaurant earlier called Freddy's Steakburgers (only to realize it's actually called Freddy's Frozen Custard and Steakburgers) and ate there. Wanted to honor Ted's name and think of him while we ate at this Ruby's/Five Guys/In N Out style (think red/white) restaurant. Salty, tasty and oh so bad for us, but it had to be done.
From there we ended up back at the hotel and while Riley went for a run, I settled in with some S04 of BCS, trying to get caught up for S06 dropping on Monday with two episodes.
Thursday morning we got up and I headed downstairs to get coffee and breakfast. Couldn't interest Riley in anything but I got a way too expensive latte and lemon loaf. Super lame. We then tried to find the actual downtown of GJ and realized the strip we found the night before was pretty much it. We found a Lego store that had some amazing displays and products (if a bit expensive) and walked around some more. We then drove to a local park and walked along the river. Apparently disc golf is popular in and around GJ and there were holes (buckets?) for disc golf all over that park.
Since our school tour was at 1, we decided to eat a little earlier and stopped by a Thai restaurant that did Chinese and Vietnamese as well. Naturally we both got pho and got stuffed before heading to the school.
At the school, we met Riley's tour guide, who took us and another mother/daughter around the school. We visited the theater and got to go on stage, backstage, see the shop and bowels of the space. We saw some buildings with classes in session, got to go through the athletic complex, and then later on, saw some dorm rooms. The campus itself is pretty small, definitely walkable. The grounds were pretty much flat, with no hills to be seen anywhere. Many students traveled on skateboards as well as bikes.
After the tour, a quick stop for an early dinner at Qdoba, then off on a 3.5 hr drive back to Denver. It went faster than the drive there (felt that way at least) and we got to the hotel at about 8:30 or so. Once again, Riley went for a run and a Cup O Noodles while I tried to unwind from the drive and travel. We went lights out around 10:30 with a 3:15 alarm for the next morning.
I slept OK, but 3:15 is still brutally early. We headed to the airport, 25 minutes away and dropped off the car. Once at the airport, we were stuck in the longest line I've ever been in. It seemed to wind through the entire airport. Luckily it moved pretty quickly and we got up to security before too long. We made our way through to our gate and got on our plane without much drama.
I don't want to go into too much detail just because the trip was so tedious. Nothing major happened, just a bunch of plane hopping when our original flight was a direct flight. Alaska really messing up with their staffing or stuff, but we made it home and here we are.
At the end of it all, Riley really liked CMU and what they had to offer. I liked it a lot as well. The buildings and amenities all seemed newer, the campus was nice and the area (GJ) was also cool. Weather and distance might be an issue, but when we checked, it's actually about 70 miles closer to home than Irvine! Riley woke up on Saturday thinking how much he liked it and by that afternoon, he had accepted CMU's offer to attend their school. Now we just have to figure out timing and pricing and everything. Will be interesting come late summer to see scheduling around moving both Hay and Riley to their schools. But I guess we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
Go Mavericks!
