Austin to Dallas

Day 109 - Austin to Dallas - BEAUTIFUL Sunny and Upper 60's:

**As some of you may or may not know there was a plane crash an an IRS building in Austin. We were nowhere near the crash. It was clearly on the minds of everyone we met at UT but rest assured we were and are safe.

We began our day with a lovely breakfast at our hotel. We headed out a bit later than originally planned and made our way straight to the University of Texas campus. We had originally scheduled our tour of Darrell K Royal Stadium for 4pm but decided to skip the Texas History Museum and do the tour at 12:30pm.

Our tour began with a look at the brand new trophy room attached to the stadium. It was quite impressive to see all the national championship trophies, Vince Young's trophies, and Ricky William's trophies. They have a whole case dedicated to the accolades and trophies of Earl Campbell and Ricky Williams. I saw my first Heisman in person which was pretty cool! The trophies are quite large and I would imagine quite heavy. They have two unique trophies in the case at this time. One is the Golden Hat. This trophy is awarded to the winner of the Oklahoma/UT game each year...there is only one trophy and the winner is etched...kind of like a Stanley Cup. The other is the Lonestar Showdown Trophy. This encompasses all varsity men's and women's teams who compete against Texas A&M. The schools are awarded points for wins. At the end of the school year the school with the most points gets to keep the trophy. There were many other pieces of memorabilia including Rose Bowl footballs, BCS trophies and player jerseys. It was a beautiful room.

From the trophy room we headed out to the statue of Earl Campbell. It is HUGE. The statue stands at about nine feet. This lead us to the second trophy room. This includes all sports. Here there was a nice piece dedicated to Ian Crocker (swimming...he's from Portland, ME) as well as Aaron Piersol (swimming), and Cat Osterman (softball). They had a large number of baseball trophies as it is their second largest program as well. The room was not quite as nice as the football room but it was nice to see dedication to other sports. After leaving this room we saw the memorial to all the Texans killed in WWI. Prior to 1996 the stadium was called Texas Memorial Stadium in honor of those men killed. In 1996 it was renamed Darrell K Royal stadium in honor of the coach that led them to three national titles and twelve southwest titles.

We finally made it into the stadium after this. To say it is huge is an understatement. The stadium was completed in 1924 however it has undergone EXTENSIVE renovations. While the stadium is still on that foundation, it is the only thing left. With all of the renovations the most recent being completed in August 2009, the stadium now has a SEATING capacity of 100, 119. It has additional standing room only spots as well. This makes it the largest seating capacity in Texas. It has more seating than the new Dallas Cowboy's stadium. However with the standing room only spaces the Cowboy's stadium can hold 111,000 people. The record at Darrell K Royal is 101, 357. At one point Godzillatraun was the largest high-definition video screen in the world. It has since been surpassed but is the second largest in college sports and Texas only to the Dallas Cowboys. The field is immaculate and I cannot even begin to imagine what it must be like on a game day. The guide told us that people start barbecuing as early as 5am for a 7pm game!

Our last stop was in the room dedicated to BEVO. For those of you who do not know BEVO is the school mascot. He is a longhorn steer with burnt orange coloring. There have been fourteen different BEVO's. There are a number of stories as to how he got his name but in reality no one really knows....The room dedicated to BEVO is quite extensive. There is lots of memorabilia and information about him. The floor has memorial tiles to each BEVO that has passed. BEVO is cared for by a group of honorary undergraduate students called the Silver Spurs and resides on a ranch outside of Austin. He comes early on game days and has a special spot on the field where he watches all the action.

After the tour we grabbed lunch on campus before heading back to the car. We then made the drive to Dallas. By we I actually mean Ben. Still not feeling well, I took about an hour and a half nap. When we finally arrived in Dallas and made our way directly to the Market Street area. We took a walk to where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. It was an erie scene to be at knowing that on this spot in 1963 we lost so much potential. They have two X's in the tar. One is faint where he was initially shot and the second is bright white to indicate where the fatal shot took place. From the spot you can see the window where Lee Harvey Oswold took those shots. The window remains open at all times as a memorial to the area. There is a museum on the sixth floor (where the shot was fired) that you can visit that chronicles the day's events and includes eye witness video and audio. We arrived too late to go but we may try and stop in tomorrow. It was an incredible feeling, standing in history, I don't know if it was because it was more recent or because I know more but it was truly one of the more meaningful stops on the trip so far for me.

After paying our respects we walked around downtown Dallas for a while before making our way to Plano for the night. Some good friends of ours have family here and I am so excited to get my hair cut tomorrow!! We are then off to Cowboy Stadium for a tour...so random Jerry Jones (the Cowboy's owner) was just shown at the men's figure skating finals in the Olympics!