Lovin' the Longhorns

The first stop on our trip was my sister Monica's house. It was great to see her family again! She lives in a suburb of Austin. While there, we visited the Round Rock.

This rock formation marked the low water area where the Chisolm Trail crossed the Brushy Creek. Ranchers would take their cattle across the creek here. The Chisolm Trail was used in the late 1800's to transport an estimated 5,000,000 cattle from Texas to Kansas. (There's a nice little history lesson for you.)

The highlight of this outing was the tiny frog Savanah caught.

The statues of Longhorns were also a big hit with my kids.

Speaking of Longhorns,  the next day we visited the University of Texas-Austin.

It was amazing  to be on campus. The buses are burnt orange, the street signs are burnt orange, most shirts are burnt orange, (We dropped some serious cash buying the whole family some new shirts that are burnt orange.) It was the Longhorn fan's dream come true. 

We took a photo by the statue of Bevo, the longhorn of all longhorns.

Here is a photo from the last time we were on campus.

It was obvious that Este was itching to go to college there. (I was too, I've heard their nursing program is exemplary.) Este tried on a helmet just to see how it fit.

Only $350 for a used, smelly football helmet. I asked him what it smelled like and he replied that it smelled like football. Ethan pointed out that meant it smelled like sweat, stinky-smelly sweat. Este didn't care one bit.

We took a tour of THE stadium. This place is huge! It seats over 100,000 people. The cheapest seats average $150 per seat. All of the games are sold out. I've heard the tailgating parties before the game are incredible! That's one thing, Texans do know how to barbecue.

We walked into the main foyer of the stadium. It had marble floors and ornate wood paneling on all of the walls.  It was like a museum with all the football trophies. Coaches Awards, Heisman's, and the National Championship trophy from 2005.

All the other sports have little closet sized areas in another less fancy building. You all know where the priorities lay in the Texas Athletic department. Actually, the football program brings in the most revenue and pays for all the other sports.

The tour took us practically on the field. They have a rule that you can't take pictures of the field if there are any players on it. Sure enough, I couldn't take any pictures because there were two players way down on the other side of the field. I was hoping they would run off the field for just 10 seconds but, they didn't.

Here is a photo of the Godzillatron. It was the largest high-def video scoreboard in the world. That was until the Dallas Cowboys built their new stadium.

Those two players on the field didn't stop me however, I just went all paparazzi and took a picture from a different place.

Going to a game here is definitely on our bucket list.