California Institute of Technology

 Yesterday's college visit was to CIT, California Institute of Technology.  You may have heard of MIT or Massachusetts Institute of Technology, well, this is the West coast version.  The average SAT score is 2300 out of 2400.  These are some smart kids!  My son isn't sure he can get in, but we are encouraging him to at least give it a try.

 This is a beautiful campus with LOTS of trees.  It's an older school, built in the 1800's so the trees have had a long time to grow.  I love the older campuses with the history and time to build a reputation.

 Maybe my dad can tell me what kind of tree these are.  They were on many of the campuses we visited.  They have these giant pods and some had turned into big puff balls.  Some had pink flowers on them and the ones with leaves were feathery.  They had spikes on them.  They were just very interesting.  I don't remember seeing trees like this before.

 At every campus we've visited, they have had a statue of the mascot.  We went looking for the Beaver, the mascot of CIT.  My son 'saw' it across the campus, so we walked toward it.  Here it is, a big rock.  He sat on his glasses last week and I think he needs to get them fixed.  The campus is beautiful with a central parklike walkway that goes the center of the campus with tall buildings on either side.

 This was the tallest building on campus.  I wondered if those ropes were for climbing, but I think they were for maybe a Christmas Tree at night.

 Everyone stared at us when we stopped to take a picture.  My son was covering up the giant stain on his shirt.  We ate in the dorms at he got pesto all over his shirt.  They have a weird system where you pay by the pound for your food.  This place may be very expensive for my son.  I know Humboldt is also on the pay by the pound food system.  It is supposed to cut down on food waste.

And coming home, we drove in this almost the entire way home.  Bumper to bumper traffic.  My right leg has a huge muscle from stepping on the break 10,000 times.  And a tip for anyone who drives on I5 coming up from LA.  Take the truck route on the right as you are leaving LA because you will cut off about 15 minutes.  I've driven this route many times and never gone that way.  This time I was driving a truck so felt I was ok staying in the truck lane.

Feels good to be home!