dual personalities

You can expect interesting posts from my mother about the things we saw and the places we went on our trip. I bring you, however, a tongue-in-cheek look at one of our favorite places of the whole trip: Otero Junior College.

Otero Junior College was the “home base” for the symposium. I mean, technically. We went to Bent’s Old Fort three days in a row, so I’d put that on the home base list, as well. Anyway, Otero had a pretty little campus where I was always able to find a parking spot. And they have a rodeo team–Go Rattlers! Sadly, we didn’t decide we wanted Otero sweatshirts until Saturday when the bookstore was closed.

But the reason I count it as one of “our favorite places of the whole trip” is that it had real UC Sunnydale vibes. Specifically the Thanksgiving episode where Buffy’s perfect Thanksgiving feast is disrupted by an army of Chumash Indians, the original inhabitants of Sunnydale, whose spirits have come alive to avenge the wrongs that were done to their people after Xander inadvertently releases their spirits from the remains of the old Sunnydale Mission.

Otero even has the Koshare Indian Museum and Kiva. UC Sunnydale had a Cultural Center.

In case you’re wondering, the kiva, a modern adaptation of ancient subterranean rooms used for rituals, is owned by the Otero College. It was built in 1949 by the La Junta Boy Scout troop under the leadership of James Francis “Buck” Burshears. The museum holds a pretty impressive collection of Native American art and artifacts.

I’m just telling you guys, I kept expecting to see this guy around every corner.

What can I say, but we amuse ourselves.

Also, I’d like to thank the super nerds who maintain websites like this so that not-as-super nerds can find the information they seek and still be thankful they haven’t reached that level of nerdom.