A long two days

(Some of the views in western Illinois, a giant cross, and the Gateway Arch as you cross the bridge into St. Louis, Missouri)

Ryan again, resting in a hotel in downtown Minneapolis on Wednesday night. To set the scene, and the madness of our trip, we have one baseball game on our television (Nationals-Reds), and different ones (Padres-Braves and Phillies-Cardinals) on each of our laptops in the room. It's like our own personal sports bar, minus the beer (too expensive) and the flashing lights (too gaudy).
We have made it through what should prove to be the most tiring portion of the trip, an epic two days that involved about 14 hours of driving and two games with little to no sleep.
It started when we left Cincinnati Tuesday morning and headed west to St. Louis. We got there around 4 p.m. local time for a 7 p.m. game at the beautiful Busch Stadium (III). After the game we immediately took off for Minneapolis and outside of several stops for gas we went straight through the night arriving at our hotel around 7 a.m. Then we killed a few hours before a noon start at brand new Target Field.
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St. Louis
This was the third time I went to St. Louis to see a baseball game. The first was a hectic affair in September 2005 to catch the last Busch Stadium before it was blown up. That was a three-hour stopover on the way to Chicago.
The second time was Opening Day 2008 when, as mentioned before, it rained in the third inning and never stopped and I went home soaked and without seeing a full game before having to fly back to Connecticut.
I thought the forecast might result in the same this time around, but in fact it was a beautiful night, after a handful of raindrops in the first inning, and the heavy weather didn't come until the drive afterwards.
I knew the last time I saw this stadium that I liked it a lot, but it was hard to gauge how much that was being a Cardinals fan and how much was that the park really is special. This time it was clearer to me that this is one of the most beautiful parks in the country.
The red brick facade is gorgeous, particularly when viewed from the highway driving in. The view of the Gateway Arch from Illinois is pretty good too. I had never seen it on the drive into the city from the east before, how it was intended to be seen, as I had always flown into the city.
The inside of the stadium is beautiful too, with the view of the Arch through the gap in center field and overall a very good design. The one flaw in comparison to other parks is that there are some parts of the stadium from which you cannot see the field, but not many.
The game was also the first time I'd seen a Cardinals home win, and their seventh in a row overall. So that was very good. I bought a new jersey, surprisingly the first one I've owned, but was upset to find after the game that I could have bought an authentic game-day jersey for as much as I paid for the replica one.

(Me ready to join my Cardinal brethren)

It's always special for me to be in St. Louis. I never get to experience being a part of a fan base. In fact, at most stadiums, whether or not the Cardinals are playing, I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb with my St. Louis hat/shirt. In St. Louis I'm just one of the crowd. Nobody even suspects I'm from the east coast.
After the game was when things got interesting, as we could see on the radar that a thick clump of thunderstorms was about to arrive, and we headed west right into it. For about five minutes it was so bad we had to slow down to about 35 on the highway and the lightning flashes over the flat plains were spectacular. But we made it through, and after about a half an hour it was just a light drizzle that disappeared quickly.
But what a boring ride through northern Missouri and Iowa. Matt did the first half and then I switched on around 3 a.m. and did most of the remainder except for the last hour into Minneapolis.
The roads through Iowa, for the most part, are straight as an arrow with nothing at all around. In a way it's nice to see pitch black skies above you, but there's not much to look at obviously. We made it through by listening to most of the Billy Joel songbook.
Matt fell asleep towards the end, as the sun began to come up in northern Iowa. It was very pretty and Minnesota as well.


(Above left: The sun starts to come up over northern Iowa; Above right: Our view of the game at Target Field; Below left: Twins mascot T.C. and a young fan; Below center: A statue of Twins great Kirby Puckett rounding the bases during the 1991 World Series; Below right: One of the classic Twins logos displayed in center field.)

Minneapolis
When we got into the city we couldn't check into our hotel until after the game, but we did leave the car with the valet parking and walked to the stadium. Brand new Target Field is very nice, and fitting for Minnesota.
They really embrace the woodsy nature of the state, and the field is designed to include a lot of earth tones and had small pine trees lining a portion of center field.
The design of the park is a little quirky, very angular with areas of seats sticking out at different angles. The cooler part is that it was built on top of pre-existing roads, which now actually weave under parts of the stadium and around others, a very unique way to blend the stadium into the downtown area.
I'll talk more about Minneapolis in a separate post, but as for the game, we were probably a little too tired to enjoy it completely. By the latter innings we were getting upset when the Indians relief pitchers started to slow down the tempo drastically. But we made it through.
Matt, a Twins fan, got to see his first Twins game and it was a win. The fans packed into the stadium, especially for a Wednesday afternoon game. There were thousands of standing room tickets alone and most of the seats were filled. Among those circling the concourse were us. Standing room isn't a bad way to see a game at these new stadiums. The view is fine, you just have to withstand the fatigue factor, but the good thing is you can hop around from spot to spot.
After the game we walked back to our hotel and crashed for most of the night. Had we not been so tired we might have gone out to see the Mall of America, or perhaps an hour drive to see the World's Largest Ball of Twine (not a joke). But instead, we took much welcomed showers, ate a bit and napped. I eventually went out for a walk around the city for about an hour and a half, but here I am back in the room.

It's on to the Field of Dreams tomorrow, the actual site where the movie was filmed and the field still exists. They let tourists play on it and stuff, so I'm excited. The problem is that once again there are thunderstorms in the forecast, some of them possibly severe. So we'll see what the day brings us.