The Baseball Trip 2015   Day 4

Thursday, July 30, 2015

Random observation from Randy: "It's probably something simple, like a rock in your wheel."
Me: "You think so?"
Randy:  "I have no idea."

O joy of joys, that's exactly what is was! Must have picked it up off-roading in The Shawnee National Forest. And - believe it or not - the nice mechanics at Goodyear took care of it free of charge. They get a nice letter to management and a shout out on Yelp.

After that business we headed to breakfast and then off to Louisville. More "scenic highways" and forests. There's not much to show until we got into the city.

The Louisville Bats are a nod to the Louisville Slugger factory. They are the Triple-A affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds. Tonight they are matched up against the Charlotte Knights, which just happens to be the Triple-A squad belonging to the Chicago White Sox.

Again, our Chicago affiliates were winning until the home town came through with a bunch of runs late in the game. Here are a few pictures of the park, Louisville Slugger Field:

Front gate.

Center field scoreboards.

Condos and office buildings behind the ballpark.

From center field.

Bridge into Louisville. The stadium is right by the river.

Left field stands.

Center field party deck.

Behind home plate.

Right field stands.

From center field stands:Louisville skyline, sunset.

Favorite Signs: Harry's Smoked Pig

                          Joey D's Barbecue and Self-Storage

Favorite Town Name: Grrec, KY  (yes, two R's)

                                     White House, TN

Random observations from Randy:

"The key to a good sign is to make it readable. I have no idea what that just said."

" There's more of a prosperity vibe on this trip. Most of our trips,things seemed run down and closed up. Of course, we're not in Ohio yet."

"Mmmmmm......caramel nut clusters."

The Baseball Trip 2015  Day 3

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

First, an update: I never told you the outcome of last night's game. The Miners were down two runs until they scored on a wild pitch and again on an errant pick-off attempt. Then some guy named Mike Earley hit a walk-off home run for the win. Quite exciting for the two hundred fans in attendance. Turns out Earley was a Chicago White Sox draft pick.

We started the day with breakfast at The Vault, an old bank that was turned into a restaurant. After that, we headed southeast across the bottom of Illinois toward, eventually, Nashville. We originally planned for a minor league game in Memphis until we found out first pitch was set for 11:30 am. Not gonna happen.

Our trip took us through The Shawnee National Forest, but even the cover of tall trees could not lower the temperatures to any comfortable level. The temps hit mid-nineties by 10:00 am. This is our third straight day of high temps and high humidity. 

Being the modern day pioneers that we are, we took a swift left onto an unmarked road in the National Forest, because, you know, what could possibly happen? It was two or three miles of dirt and gravel road, with a couple of shallow creeks to ford. Hell, I have an all wheel drive vehicle. Here's what our fun road looked like:

Fun, right?

Except that we reached a point where the road narrowed and turned to mud:

Randy hopped out and walked around the bend to do a little recon and reported back: The road stops at a river, with no way across. Turns out it was just an access road for farmers.We turned around and headed back.

But we don't care! 

We found our way back to the main forest roadway and headed for the Ohio River. I parked on top of the levee at Golconda:

Ohio River

The road to the ferry across the river is called the Ohio River Scenic Bypass.

Random observation from Randy: "Scenic Bypass. I see nothing especially scenic."

We boarded the ferry to Kentucky. An old man asked us where we were from, and he said, "Oh. I built I-55 in Chicago." Then he told us not to worry, it was going to cool off tomorrow. Thanks for the info.

Taken from the ferry.

The ferry dumped us off at Marion, Kentucky, where we stopped for lunch at the Marion Cafe. It's housed in an old masonic Lodge, built in 1888.

They have home-made pies. Randy and the waitress scoffed at me because I'm not particularly fond of pie. They made me feel shame. Randy enjoyed his Key Lime pie.

After that, another scenic drive through Land Between the Lakes State Park. It is so named because it is about a thousand mile long piece of land between two lakes. I would have taken a picture, but you've seen trees before.

Favorite signs:   Hooker's Drive-Thru

                           Hooker's Men's Store

We arrived in Nashville just in time for first pitch. The Sounds are the Triple-A affiliate of the Oakland A's. As luck would have it, they were playing the Cubs' Triple-A team, the Iowa Cubs. Iowa was winning until the Sounds tied it in the seventh. Then some guy crushed a home run in the bottom of the eighth. They held on for the victory. Here are a few shots of a very cool ballpark, First Tennessee Park:

 The video board is a guitar!

 From right field.

 The Iowa Cubs roster includes members of their big league roster like Junior Lake and...

 Javi Baez

This is how close we sat - second row - for free!

Some lady had two extra tickets and she gave them to a couple of campaign workers shilling "Bone for Mayor" at the front gate. She told them to give them to a couple of nice people. The guy told us that and said he would give them to us even though we looked like "a couple of jack-legs." After we stopped laughing, he said there was one stipulation: we had to wear "Bone for Mayor" stickers. We did. For ten minutes. Would you vote for a guy named Bone?

Things we could not hang around for: Collinsville Bird Fair

More Favorite Signs:  Brazilian Blowout!

                                    Doom Chapel Road

Favorite Town Name:  Cave-In-Rock, IL

Here's where my luck runs out: While parking my car in the lot at our hotel, I hear a clanging, rattling noise. I thought I had run over a piece of metal. Turns out it's coming from my car. Oh hell, you say!

I'll find a mechanic in the morning, I guess.

The Baseball Trip 2015  Day 2

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

I think there was some tornadic action last night. Is tornadic a word?

The flag still stands.

So we took the bridge over to the Illinois side of the river and wound our way south and east to Collinsville, home of the Fairmount Racing Emporium. Here's what it looks like from the outside:

Pretty unassuming, huh?

The plan was to play 5 races and then shoot south again to catch the Independent League Southern Illinois Miners play the Frontier Grays. The Independent League is for players who have not caught on with any Major League affiliated minor league teams but who have not given up the ghost of one day playing in the Bigs.

I was down about 12 bucks after the first four races and decided to take a chance on a horse I thought had some speed. The opening odds were 7-1. After I placed my bet (10 bucks across), I looked at the board and saw the odds had risen to 12-1. Uh-oh, I'm in trouble. They were as high as 19-1 before the race and went off at 17-1. There's a waste of $30.00.

Damned if that horse didn't win. My payout was $299.60. My new favorite horse: Wildn'Wooly!

 Wildn'Wooly

In the winner's circle.

After the horses, we were on our way to Marian, Illinois, home of the Southern Illinois Miners.

But first, a chance to capture the glory that is The World's Largest Bottle of Ketchup!

Majestic, no?

Random observation from Randy: "You know you're in the south when you see gizzards advertised at the KFC."

Here's a look at the home plate gate at Rent One Stadium, home of the Miners:

I don't know what Rent One is.

Behind home plate.

From the third base line.

The Miners have two mascots. One is a chicken named 'Lucky.' The other is a dog named 'Grounder.' Usually, in my experience, teams with two mascots will match them up as mates. Also, what do a chicken and a dog have to do with coal mining? I think real coal miners would scare the hell out of the kids. Anyway, here's my obligatory shots with the both of these clowns:

 Lucky

Grounder

Notice the sky over the stadium...

Oh God, no, here it comes again!

Well, we lucked out...the game never stopped as the storm swirled past Rent One Stadium. But we weren't so lucky with the heat index again, and that storm was heading right for our state park campgrounds. So on to another motel. 

Random observation from Randy: "Buzz's Automotive. How do you suppose someone gets the name Buzz?"

Favorite sign: Home of The Ham Sandwich

Favorite Town name: Kaskaskia, IL

No signs of the apocalypse today...except for those clouds.

One last random observation from Randy: "Hey! A freight train with oil tankers. I hope it doesn't derail and burn us all."

By the way, The Frontier Grays have no home stadium. That's right, they play all their games on the road. True story.Where do they hold their meetings?

Tomorrow: The deep forest and Nashville.

The Baseball Trip 2015  Day 1

Monday, July 27, 2015

There are only 2 rules on the Baseball Trip:

1) No interstates

2) No chain restaurants.

The rest is happenstance...

Route 66 is a memory...nothing really remains but the fantasy, It seems like a good idea once; you have to travel the original route 66 once in your lifetime. But twice? Most of the route runs parallel to I-55, which begs the question: Why bother? What still does run through cities and towns is littered with tourist traps and vile exploitation like Route 66 Diners and Route 66 ice cream shops and all kinds of souvenir stands and "museums."

But we did do it again, and this is what we saw: corn. Corn, corn, corn. And soybeans. I cannot believe we let people go hungry in this country.

Oh yeah, the we is me and my navigator, Randy. Randy also makes wry observations on the state of humanity.We are on our way to St. Louis to see the best team in baseball (or ever, if you believe the Cardinal fans) play the Cincinnati Reds.

Along the way we like to play a morbid car game where we count signs of the apocalypse, like Walmarts, Curves, or military memorials with howitzers. This trip we will be counting prisons, people riding in golf carts who are not golfing, and women on riding mowers (one of our favorites).

Anyway, one thing we did see was an historic two cell jail house in Gardner, Illinois. Does that count as a prison? Yes, yes it does.

We also saw this:

Random observation from Randy: "I bet this was a barbecue fire."

Anyway, we also saw (I think it was in O'Dell) a woman riding down the street in a golf cart with a young boy in the back. Like it was a car. Why would she do that? I don't know.

But Illinois is the Land of Lincoln, so we decided to check out some Lincoln stuff. There was a prefab "historic village" in New Salem with a statue of Lincoln on his horse. (I hope it was his horse, Honest Abe and all...)

It looks like he's checking his iPhone.

But upon closer examination, he's just reading a book:

Probably The Bible, or a law book. Because, you know, he's Abe Lincoln.

Anyway, we caught a little ferry across the Illinois river which would lead to another ferry across the Mississippi. Except all the ferries across the Mississippi were closed Monday through Thursday. What's up with that?

Ferry across the Illinois River.

River houses.

It really didn't matter - we heard the Cardinal game was sold out. And we were not paying scalper prices for a stadium we have already seen twice. So we bagged St. Louis to look for a campsite. Only Monday evening there was a predicted heat index reading of 109.

The plan was to take the Mississippi River road to a large enough crossroads to find a motel.

And then all hell broke loose.

O I have seen things! O terrible, terrible storm! Torrential downpour, monsoon of Biblical proportion great waves washing over the car blown sideways dodging tree debris vision limited, one and a half hours to travel 25 miles nowhere to stop along two lanes washed over O! where are you Mississippi River biker bar? Where are you Casey's gas-mart? I cannot pull over because there is no over on this god-forsaken highway! Magical text from the ether...how did they get this number? "Severe Threat Alert! Flash Flood Warning this area until 12:45 am. Avoid flood areas." The world as we know it right now is a flood area and there is no high ground.

I have never had a worse headache. I have never seen a storm like this. We drove from the head to the tail of that monster. Even the natives told me they have never seen anything like it. And when it was over, it was still daylight.

Hey, There's a woman on a riding mower!

Favorite Town Name: Godley, IL

                                       Hopedate, IL

Favorite sign:  Corn Crib Stadium

Things we cannot stick around for:  Chesterfield chicken and fish fry.

Women on riding mowers - 1

Prisons - 1

People on golf carts not playing golf - 1

Tomorrow: Fairmount Horse Racing & The Southern Illinois Miners baseball action.