Road Trip

My wife and I will be flying out of Fresno bright and early on Sunday the 8th to begin a three-week summer vacation. We'll have a stopover in Phoenix before proceeding on to Chicago. We'll go down to Springfield to see the Lincoln sites and then mosey on over to Ohio to visit relatives. Along the way we've got tickets for six major league baseball games. I'm not sure how much blogging I'll be able to do; it could be rather sporadic for the next three weeks.

I hear Chicago is a great town. I've bought the "city pass" for the major museums and such. Millennium Park is supposed to be well worth a visit and there is plenty of stunning architecture. We're looking forward to going to a jazz cafe or two. Best of all, I've got tickets to see the Cubbies in storied Wrigley Field on the 10th. Chicago is also home base for Barack Obama; we'll see if there is anything to report about that.

After spending a couple of days in Springfield we'll take a jaunt over to St. Louis to catch a Cardinals game in the new Busch Stadium. Joan has relatives in Cincinnati and Wheeling and I have some in the Canton area. A lot of them are elderly now and this will likely be the last time for us to get together. We plan to stop in Columbus to see the Ohio State campus where my father and uncle went to school. We'll see the Reds play the Dodgers, so I'll be rooting for the visitors in that one. I'll try to pick my Aunt Rose's brain for stories about my father and uncle. We'll see a Pirates' game in Pittsburgh on a side trip from Wheeling and we have six people going to see the Indians in Cleveland.

From there it's a jaunt up to Detroit to see the Tigers. On the way back to Chicago we'll make a stop in South Bend to take a look at the Notre Dame campus. Then it's back to Chicago for two last nights before the flight home to California. Maybe we'll take in something we didn't get a chance to in our first 5 days in the Windy City.

As you can see, it will be very much a whirlwind tour. We'll be staying in 11 different places in 21 days. It should be quite a diverse trip, with sightseeing, some history, relatives and six ballgames. After all that, coming back home will seem like the vacation.