You’ve probably noticed it’s been a while since our last post. We spent these last few days camping in The Grand Tetons and Yellowstone, and before that, well, we were just lazy and we're on the move a lot. Moral of the story is there is a lot to catch up on, so we’ll spare some of the minute details for the sake of time. We left off in Milwaukee and since then we’ve been to Minnesota, Kansas City, St. Louis, back to KC, Denver, and then began our camping trip on the way to Seattle. And that brings us to today as I write this from I-90 west in Idaho.
We headed out from Wisconsin for the Twin Cities to see the Twins play the Royals (yes, we saw the Royals AGAIN. Couldn’t we have found a better team to see all the time?) As most of you know, the Twinkies just opened up their new stadium this year, Target Field, which is an outdoor field and made a lot of noise because the team has played in a dome for a long time. We got to the stadium a couple hours before the game and toured the outside of the park since it wasn’t yet open. Some highlights included a huge bronze baseball mit, this wall that was lined with shiny aluminum flaps that sort of fluttered when the wind blew, so it made it look like the wall was kind of fluid, and really the fact that the place was so clean. Most of the parks we’ve seen so far are well more than a year worn, so it was definitely a change. I also liked the color of the building structure which was sort of a reddish brown hue. We eventually made our way into the field for the game and found our seats in the lower left field bleachers just behind the foul pole. The twins won the game so it was a great atmosphere…and I think Twins fans are of the more passionate we’ve seen so far on this trip. There was also some good variety of food in the park, including the stir fry that Andy got. But, all in all, I thought Target Field was nice, but nothing really that spectacular. We didn’t know anyone in the Twin Cities and we were both pretty beat from a long couple days, so after the game we decided to just crash in a motel and hit the road early for Kansas City, where we would be staying with Andy’s Aunt Chip.
We hit the road early for our trek down to Missouri. After picking up Joyce’s tent from her brother’s house in Minneapolis, we found out first hand how boring Iowa really is. The weather was awful, with 55mph gusts and it was pouring buckets! But it was strange rain because it would pour for 30 seconds, be completely sunny for a few minutes, then absolutely pour again. It also didn’t help that we were on I-35 and only I-35 for the whole state of Iowa.
We finally made it to Kansas City, which was great because Aunt Chip made us feel right at home. She fed us like kings and it was great to relax in her house for a few days and spend some time out of the Tacoma. While we were there, we spent some time with Chris (Andy’s cousin, Aunt Chip’s son and brother to Steve who we went to the Milwaukee game with) his wife Katy and their two boys Tyler and Max, who were awesome. One of the funniest parts of our stay there was this one time I was walking out of Steve and Katy’s house to the truck, and Tyler (who is about 3) said “How is he going to fit in there??” (If you don’t know, I’m 6’5” so I get a lot of height comments). That was great.
The second day we were there (I think) we visited the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. They don’t call it a hall of fame because in their minds everyone was a hall of famer, which I thought was a nice touch. It was a really cool place with a movie to start that talked about the history of the league and some of the more successful players like Satchel Paige and Jackie Robinson, which was followed up by a walking tour with all sorts of different info, artifacts, signs, posters, old scorecards and all kinds of stuff. We even learned that the first time lights were ever used for a baseball night game was in the Negro Leagues, and it actually did a lot to attract fans and eventually made its way to the Major Leagues. There was also a gift shop, where we got a couple things. One of the teams was the Pittsburgh Crawfords, which for one year had an amazing five future MLB hall of famers on the team, and Andy was able to find a Crawfords’ hat. The funny thing was, the next night we were watching Baseball Tonight and the Indians and Pirates were wearing Negro League uniforms so the Pirates were wearing the Crawfords stuff, which was quite the coincidence!
So, our game in St. Louis was before the Kansas City game. After a few day hiatus at Aunt Chip’s, we crossed Missouri on I-70 (another long, straight, boring road that we got very used to) to go to St. Louis. We found a Days Inn which, from the internwebs, seemed not too far from downtown. It was a real nice hotel for not much money, but the bad part was it was about a 2 mile hike to the downtown area and wasn’t quite in the best area. Fortunately we were only there for a night. We got there and we were both pretty tired, so we had to take some time to get our modes up. Then we made the trek to Union Station which we thought would be cool. They had some alright shops and a food court, but the best score was a sports shop that had a buy one baseball hat get another at half price. We had been on the lookout for something like that, so I got a new Sox cap (I had only had the Memorial Day version until then) and a throwback Brewers hat (the one with the glove), and Andy got a D.C. Memorial Day and baby blue Royals hat.
Then we went to the Stadium and got our tickets and walked around the outside. They had a lot of awesome bronze statues of the Cardinals greats like Stan The Man Musial and Ozzie Smith, my favorite shortstop of all time. We then found a bar to get a couple beers before the game and were thoroughly entertained by some guy who turned 60 that day and was there with his son who was about our age. So we got in the usual rigamaro with them, telling them about the trip and such. But, they were both pretty sloshed so it was really just funny to listen to them for a while. Busch Stadium was really a cool place. It was fairly new and had good stores, including a bat manufacturing shop right in the stadium. Our seats were in the third row of the right field bleachers. It was blindingly sunny that day so not only were we sweating bullets but we were almost completely blinded by the sun for the first few innings. They were playing the Mariners and Ichiro led off the game with a home run which was coming right at us. We both stood up when we saw the right field coming back to the wall. Then he turned around ‘cause he knew it was gone and we were like “Oh, S%*#!!”. We had no clue where it was, but it turned out to be a whole section above us so it was an absolute BOMB! If you happened to be watching ESPN that night you can vaguely see us, Andy dressed in all red and me being the tall goofy kid in a white soccer jersey (it’s on the wrap in recommended links). The game was a fun one and the Cardinals won. We checked out a couple bars after the game and made it back to the hotel.
The next morning, we watched some soccer and then headed to the Arch and went up to the top in the little tram cars they have. It was really cool…definitely do it if you go to St. Louis. Next, it was back onto I-70 to head back to K.C.
(FYI...we are actually in Los Angeles now but are still slacking with the posting/internet availability. I wrote all that a few days ago so we'll have more to come soon. And by the way...we've driven 3000+ miles in 10 days. Wow.)
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