recently in Dillon

Things are slowing down very quickly in Dillon. On May 2nd classes ended here at UMW and Mikel finished teaching his second class of the semester. He had a great time teaching his class and, judging by what I heard from his students, they enjoyed it as well.

One of the weird things about the block scheduling system that we have here at UMW is that classes end on Wednesday but the students don't graduate until Saturday. This allows many more friends and families to attend but does leave a quiet couple days between finals and graduation.

Based on how full the gym was, friends and family had no problem getting to Dillon for graduation. All of the black gowns in the picture below are graduates and the white gowns are their escorts. Graduates can choose whoever they want to escort them. Many times it is a parent or close friend. In all, there were 307 students honored at graduation between bachelors, associates, and some certificates. 

a full house in Straugh Gymnasium

 Both of my seniors graduated and one was even honored as having as the highest GPA of all graduating females. Pretty cool for graduating with a degree in Business in four years while being a four year starter on the volleyball team.

 After graduation, most of the students scattered quickly to go home to summer jobs (or not). Mikel had about a week off before going to work at the golf course so Mikel and I decided to take a mini vacation. I love a good deal so we found a great deal on a hotel in Missoula and took off for a night. We spent time walking around in the wonderful sunshine and relaxing in the calmness of another town.

Missoula is the home on the University of Montana and so I came here every year when I was playing at Idaho State. I remember walking around their downtown area and university so Mikel and I went back.

We went into a shop called Liquid Planet where they sell coffee as well as beer and wine from around the world. I love this wine display. It's a globe and is sectioned off for different countries with wine in each area are from the designated country.

wine from around the world

you can see a country sign at the top

 After we cruised the downtown, we headed down to Caras Park. There were people in small little kayaks practicing in the rapid. You can see the University of Montana across the river.

These were cool bike racks in the park. The big bikes are actually bike racks where people chain up their bike.

 We walked across the bridge to the university and found where we used to play volleyball. They have a hall of fame inside their arena so Mikel and I spent some time looking around there.

a cool bear (their mascots are the grizzlies)

statue made of trash/scraps with their football stadium in the background

It was fun to take the long way to get to Missoula. We drove through a bunch of little towns that we had never seen and it was a great opportunity to get out of town for a little bit and celebrate the end of our first year!

We also saw these antelope in the road on our drive there. They were in the middle of the road and ran in front of us (while we drove about 30mph) for probably about 30 seconds. At least it was long enough for me to get my phone out and take a picture!

antelope in the road