WAC Hoops Travel: West Texas Edition
Come along as I take a trip to ACU for a renewal of their women's basketball rivalry with SFA
With three Texas schools in the WAC this year, I thought this edition of WAC Hoops travels should involve a trip to the Lone Star State.
In this edition, we take a look at how to travel to Abilene Christian University.
There are two options for flying into the area. Cheaper, but involving a three-hour drive, is flying into DFW which has multiple airlines to choose from. The alternative is ABI, an American Airlines-only destination, that is all of 10 or so minutes from ACU’s campus. Fares into ABI are slightly more expensive because they all involve some sort of layover at DFW.
I ended up flying Frontier out of Ontario into DFW, which is perfect if you’re looking for no frills flying. Had a little bit of a delay due to an issue arming one of the doors but nothing serious.
In the Dallas area, I spent a night at Holiday Inn Express Denton South, which was a very nice location that had Starbucks and BJs within walking distance. Their breakfast buffet was excellent and I highly recommend them if you stay in Denton, and then make the trip down the next morning.
The information for that location is linked below…
https://www.ihg.com/holidayinnexpress/hotels/us/en/denton/dfwdn/hoteldetail
If you are not a fan of driving the three hours, Greyhound and this bus company called Tornado offer stops in Abilene and Dallas although that Tornado stop is at 2:30 A.M. Book Greyhound fares early because it ended up costing $101 to go home with them, so I chose Tornado for $55 because I booked at the last minute.
Tornado uses a fleet of double-decker buses that actually are pretty comfortable for the buck. No power or WiFi though that I saw, and one must be at least minimally comfortable with Spanish to communicate because their call center agents, and at least the driver I had didn’t speak much english.
In Abilene, there are actually plenty of options to eat from your chains like Panda Express, Whataburger and the like to local places such as Twisted Root Burger Company and Cork and Pig Tavern. That complex also has a nice lake to walk around.
This probably wasn’t the smartest move, but I didn’t rent a hotel for the night in Abilene because my bus was leaving at 2:30 A.M. for Dallas. However, there are lots of options in terms of local lodging. Without early check-in, I’d have spent $80 for a room I’d only use for like eight hours.
During my 10-hour wait for my flight at DFW, the lack of sleep was getting to me though so don’t make that mistake if you do it this way.
Took the Wednesday evening red-eye home on Frontier and was back to work the next morning covering the CIF-State girls golf regional finals at 8 A.M.
It was nice to meet some familiar faces on Twitter during the trip including Guy and Christy Earle, SFA radio PxP voice Chase Merrell, ACU ESPN+ PxP voice Andy Penney, and ACU SID Carrie Johnston.