Epic Mountain Adventure part 2

It's Boone Day! Wow, looks like about 35 pictures from Blowing Rock day on Saturday. Boone day didn't generate quite that many, but it was still really adorable. Waking up to that fresh mountain air is always amazing.  We grabbed a quick breakfast to start out.

Waterfall behind Boone Bagelry

The waterwheel shot

Boone Bagelry has been in the high country forever. Ella seemed fascinated by the place. She does love bagels, and they do it right. This wagon wheel used to be in front of a restaurant named Geno's that was surrounded by a hotel. Now the hotel has been converted to condos and Geno's moved about a block down the road so BB took over the restaurant space.

You may have seen this wagon wheel on the blog before... maybe not. This was 2004.

Me, it was a little colder then. and I was a little bigger.

After breakfast we headed over to the ASU campus. Again I know Ella got tired of me telling stories about the places I used to live and play, but I kept them coming anyway.

In front of my freshman dorm

I got to show her the football stadium. When she was a baby, we had season tickets to ASU football, but there's no way she would remember going to any of the games. But my first two years I was in the stadium side dorms so we got to check those out. Then we went walking over to the music building. I was a music major for the first half of the time I was there, then switched over to Radio & TV production.

Chasing ducks near the duck pond

In the 4th floor practice rooms teaching my girl how to play

I got to show her all around the School of Music, the concert halls and practice rooms. Even found my old fraternity room and billboard with pictures of the current brothers up there. Very cool. Then we got to walk through the rest of the campus and up to King street.

in Jimmy Smith Park

We found Jimmy Smith Park right across the street from the music building. This tiny crappy little bench has been made fun of on youtube. Somebody even ran a 5k inside the park. There was 1 aide station and a 10 runner limit, the park won't hold any more people than that. Took about 100 laps around the park to get the 5k.  Hilarious! But there was a stream that ran on the back side of the park that Ella really fell for. The next trip up there I'll have to plan for more hikes and waterfalls, she really loved it. She even grabbed a selfie down in the creek.

Babies first selfie

After that we went up to King Street, and ended up getting lunch at Macado's. That was my favorite place when we lived there. Getting Ella in for a sandwich was great!

We also bought that horse necklace on King street. She loved it!

After lunch we walked back through campus, I got to show her the bookstore and the big Sanford Mall. Lots of the buildings have changed around since I was a student there, but the overall layout is still the same. We had a great time just walking around campus. Graduation was the weekend before, so it was pretty empty of students at least.  Eventually we found the tunnels under Rivers St, and came up on this statue in front of the Duck Pond.

Student art sculptures on campus

The landscape is beautiful this time of year

On the Yosef statue

Taking care of Yosef in the mountains!

She was so excited to just be walking around the campus. There is a lot of construction going on there right now. The beauty of the mountains and the bubble effect of the college are very evident, it's not one of those downtown colleges where you can't see the edges of campus. The funniest thing happened when we were walking back to the car. I pontificated quietly that I wanted to find a bathroom to pee before we got back on the road, so Ella screamed as loud as she could "Yes... I... Have... To... Poop" and some groundskeeper looked at us funny. I was doubled over laughing so hard, but she didn't care. Then it was back to the school of music to teach her the secrets that all music majors learn while there: what the 3rd floor is used for.

On our way out of town I made one other detour to show her the first apartment I ever had, a little one bedroom that Kelley eventually moved into as well. She was barely interested. But as we were heading down the mountain, she did grab a pic of the views from the road.

Boone Day rocked. It turned out much better than I had hoped it would. I think Ella had a really good time walking around and enjoying the beauty of the mountains and I really enjoyed sharing so much of my past with her. It was special bonding time that I will always treasure, and I hope she will do the same.