All photos of Omaha and suburban Des Moines available on Flickr.
We spent yesterday exploring two Midwestern farming cities - Omaha, Nebraska, and Des Moines, Iowa. Omaha was only about 30 miles east of the rest stop we were at that night, so we stopped there for about three hours to work on the blog, grab lunch, and of course visit Rosenblatt Stadium. This is the home of the Men's College World Series, and is also home to the AAA affiliate of Kansas City, the Omaha Royals. We circumnavigated the park and checked out all the plaques of past champions, and it actually looked like a really nice stadium. Although I certainly don't regret stopping in Lincoln, if we would have known that the Omaha Royals played at the same stadium where the College World Series was held, and that they were home this weekend, I'm sure we would have saw a game here instead. Omaha was a decent little town, from what we did see of it. It actually reminded me a lot of Dayton, and I apologize to any of my Ohio friends who are reading this now and may have just experienced a shiver up their spine.
Around 2 PM we completed the rest of our day's drive to Des Moines. My friend Karl lives in a suburb just west of the city and we spent the rest of the day watching the final of the Little League World Series (Georgia beat Japan) and catching up over dinner, drinks, and movies. The highlight of the evening (besides drinking) was when Karl took the liberty of showing us an interesting house near a subdivision that had a functional bomb shelter and outhouse, two things which I'm sure are not up to current building codes and were somehow grandfathered in. Tomorrow we'll probably hang around here a bit before heading to Davenport to watch the Swing of the Quad Cities.
touch with baseball when his childhood heroes Robin Yount, Paul Molitor, and Jim Gantner retired but the Great Home Run Chase of 1998 reignited his passion. As a student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Erik became involved with the campus chapter of Habitat for Humanity. With this group Erik traveled to Portland, OR and Baltimore, MD to work on construction projects and help the group raise $25,000 to partially sponsor a house in Milwaukee. Also at UWM, Erik met Peter Nagel. The two attended their first Brewers game together during Opening Weekend 2003. Despite their failure to ignite the coals at their first tailgate, the two had a blast and were soon making weekly trips to the ballpark. Erik has gone on to several colleges and changed careers several times, and has moved all the way out to New Hampshire, but has always stayed true to his baseball roots by holding part-time stadium usher jobs. To this day he looks back fondly on his incredible cross-country journey.
No comments:
Post a Comment