On the road again

LJ Haider

Emma Sipple is co-editor in chief of the Valley Ventana.

My mother sat in the driver’s seat, my 13 year old sister in the passenger seat, and my 10 year old sister and I sat in the back seat of the car we christened “Tim” in the parking lot of a TJ Maxx in Denton Texas.

My sister tells my mom to turn around and there is a man standing outside the car door. My mother lets out a shriek that could have put actresses in horror movies to shame. The man said through the glass that he wanted to give us his daughter’s gospel CD. She rolls down the window a crack and he hands her a CD with a cover clearly made using Word art. My mother starts the car and drives away.

In June, the four of us traveled to Texas Christian University, University of North Texas and Texas Tech University on our road trip. We went to California to visit family in July and looked at University of Southern California, Biola University and Chapman University. My dad and I went to the University of Texas at Austin in August. I looked at both the journalism programs and screenwriting programs offered at the schools, especially at USC and UT.

While the trips to California and Austin were very enjoyable, the cross state trip was the most memorable. Over the course of three days we traveled for 16 hours in a small car where I had to sit in the backseat for 13 of the 16 hours and attempted to navigate the winding roads between Denton and Lubbock and Lubbock back to our house.

We encountered strange town names, shady motels and a town with three cemeteries where we held our breath for each one we passed.

We became closer, my sisters and I learned where we might want to go and we decided we would lead campus tours wherever we went.