Is it a sign?

Finally, here's the college road trip story. Several weeks ago I called and set up an appointment to have a tour of Angelo State University. I asked them to send me a map because I'd never been there. I never received the information, so the day before the trip I'm trying to find out how to get there from their website. With a little help from Mr. Mayhem and the atlas, I felt pretty confident that I could find San Angelo. I didn't know where to go on campus, however, so we printed off a campus map from their website. After looking at it, I was hoping that Mayhem # 1 could read it because it was way too small for me to read. (That's a whole other medical issue I need to get taken care of soon.)

Off we go at 8:00 am. The girls do homework for about the first hour and a half, and after that the gameboys come out. The bluebonnets were out in full force. (That's the state flower and they've seeded the side of the highways with them. Sometimes they're so thick it looks like water shimmering on the side of the road.) We made it to Abilene by about 10:45. Mayhem # 1 helps navigate me onto the correct state highway to go south to nowhere.

We're now on a two-lane road and still going 70mph. There's a sign that says we have 85 miles to go. It sure didn't look that far on the map in the atlas. Now that we're on a smaller road, the scenery is closer. Of course there are the usual cows and horses, but now come the buffalo, sheep, and goats. I never knew there were so many goats in Texas. One was so pregnant I said it looked like it had swallowed a 2x4 sideways. There was lots of cactus too. The girls commented on how different it made things look compared with the other grasses and bushes.

We had to go over some mountains and I think it was the Davis mountains. I know they don't compare to some of yall's mountains, but it was a change of scenery. As we started the upward trek, I spotted an 18 wheeler with a large tank of some kind. You know the "Wide Load" kind. I thought great, "Now I'm stuck and this will take forever." Luckily there were passing lanes so we blew him away. I noticed at the next uphill grade that there was a little car behind me and he acted like he wanted to pass me. I told him to come on when we got to the passing lane, but he didn't have the umpf to catch me. He became known as "Hampster Man". We teased him (without his knowledge of course) until he passed us on the downhill side.

We made it to San Angelo and negotiated our way to campus by noon. The tour is at 1:30. We still don't know what building to go to or which parking lot to park in safely. Things are not well marked. We decide to go back down the road to eat lunch because a) we're starving and b) our bums are numb. Over lunch at KFC, we figure out from the campus map which two buildings are administration buildings and decide to try to park near them.

We get back to campus a little before 1:00 and turn into the first parking lot to hunt for a parking spot and right in front we find a "Visitor" parking spot. Yeah!!! High fives all around! We go in the building, but it's the wrong building. We leave the car where it is in the very correct "Visitor" spot and walk next door. The admissions office had no reservation for us for the tour. They kept asking if I had called and I kept telling them yes. Luckily it was just a group tour so it wasn't a big deal. I was beginning to get bad vibes. We had prayed for wisdom before we left the house. I thought, "Ok, what am I suppose to be getting from this?"

The tour was ok. We had a good time, and the tour guide gave lots of good information. We didn't get to speak with anyone in the art department so that was disappointing, but we didn't know that we could've set up an appointment with a professor in advance. (That was probably in the packet of info we should've gotten after we made the appointment.) We didn't like the fact that most of the dorms were coed. The new building was basically like apartments. It wasn't separated by floors or wings. I'm sorry, but my barely 18 year old does not need to deal with the idiot boys right next door.

We finished the tour, filled out the evaluation, picked up a housing packet to look for the one all-girl dorm, and headed to the car. On the windshield is a $15 parking ticket!!! We're visitors! We parked in the "Visitor " spot! What more do you want? We headed back to the admissions office to get this taken care of. They say, "This has never happened before." They call the campus police and find out that they sometimes ticket those cars because the students will take they're parking placards off their rearview mirrors and pretend to be visitors. The tour guide and another girl admitted that they had done that before. They apologized and we headed to the car again, saying to ourselves that we hope there's not another ticket by the time we get there.

It's about 3:30 and I told the girls to finish their homework and we'd grab something to eat when we got back to Abilene. We get back on the road and then I start hitting all these little towns where I have to keep slowing down. That clues me in that I'm not on the same road because there was only one small town coming down. I don't know where I missed the turn off, but we figured out that we knew where we were and that we could get home from there.

I started noticing that the wildlife was changing. I pointed out several antelope. Then they noticed the llamas. The zebras finally convinced us that it was some type of nature preserve. After grabbing dinner at Sonic (nowhere near Abilene), I took another road to get back to the main interstate because going through the little towns was going to take forever. We finally rolled into the driveway at 8:00pm. Our bums were numb again.

About the school? I don't know. With all the things that went wrong, should I take that as a sign?