Our friends left for LA Saturday night, so Sunday morning Beverly took me on a tour of her Alma Mater – UCSB.

First we went to her old “dorms” off campus – which felt more like a resort community to me. We went into the old recreation facility and Beverly started playing piano – a talent I never knew she had.

After seeing the “dorms” we headed to campus where they had to upgrade school lighting. It was memorial day so campus was mostly deserted, which gave it an eerie quiet.

Flowers next to the parking lot in bloom.

Beverly used to be a tour guide so she was able to tell me a lot about the campus and even showed me a sample dorm room (hint: it looked the same as OSU/OU except UCSB students have to buy their own micro fridge). We went to the main library and from the 8th floor one could see past campus right down to the ocean. A little while later we made our way past the man made lake and walked along the cliffs next to the beach.

In one area we saw a multitude of fat squirrels.

We even saw a live skunk rooting around in the grass on campus. I was floored by the serenity of the campus (which is actually not in Santa Barbara the city, but Goleta, a few miles northwest). I can’t imagine what college would have been like if I could have walked out of class and been at the ocean. When I wanted time to myself in college I remember going to sit by mirror lake or the Wexner center – but these can’t compare to nature’s majesty. When we first got to the beach we came upon a fencing club practicing on the sand. That sort of thing surely would have taken place deep within Larkins or Jesse Owens at Ohio State.

Going into a campus again really pulled at the heartstrings and made me want to go back to that era. I think most of the time I was in college I was frustrated by the system, but a strong sense of nostalgia started to set in. If Skybus hadn’t gone belly-up I may have started planning a trip to Columbus to give Beverly a tour of my University.