All fall down...OK, only Randy falls down...

Ann Pisani and her favorite orangutan, Jill

Before heading West to the wide open spaces we were in Kansas City for a Royals game. Luckily for us, my friend Ann graciously offered to give us a tour of her zoo (she’s a docent, as am I), the Kansas City Zoo. What a gorgeous place! First, it’s HUGE. She reserved a golf cart to drive us around—and this was before Randy hurt his knee falling in Milwaukee. (Aside:  his knee swelled up so much he actually agreed to go to an urgent care facility where they removed about 130cc of fluid and “suggested” he use a cane. He’s much better now) The cart made it possible for him to tag along on the zoo tour; he couldn’t have made it otherwise. For that matter I’m not sure I could have made it! I think she said the zoo is a couple of hundred acres.

The highlight, for me, was seeing Ann and an orangutan sort of face to face (with a sheet of glass between them, of course) and watching Ann, clearly thoroughly enjoying herself, interacting with young zoo visitors and interpreting the orangutans, she was doing everything a docent is supposed to to! The other highlight was seeing the new gorilla mom and her baby. For those of you who are mothers, imagine having a baby that you DO NOT PUT DOWN, not even for a moment for weeks if not months. We human moms get a break when baby naps or sleeps during the night. Not the gorilla mom, she holds the baby in her arms the entire 24/7! Now that’s dedication.

Believe it or not, these are adult male lions.

Since National (or International, there’s some argument about this) Martini Day was coming up June 19, we needed to replenish our gin supply and the only place to do that was at Costco in Missouri, not Costco in Kansas (don’t ask, I have no idea why Kansas won’t let Costco sell booze). But what about vodka martinis, I can hear you ask. Oh, the horror! Vodka martinis? Oh, no, no, no!

We accomplished that very important mission and then spend a couple of very pleasant hours at Ann’s house. She remembered (how? I have NO idea) that we like Bombay gin martinis so she laid in a stock of Bombay and we had martinis on her deck. If I say it was a decadent afternoon, you won’t groan will you?

Some very convoluted planning enabled us to park our car at a Marriott, hop in Ann and Lou’s car to pick up Cory, their daughter, and head to the game and their extremely (to say the least) convenient parking for the Royals/Brewers game. Cubby of course came with us for his photo to prove he was actually at the Royals park, Kauffman Stadium. There’s an interesting article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kauffman_Stadium  about the origin of the name. The weather was really hot and humid—we desert dwellers are not accustomed to that! Anyway, lots of fun to go with friends.

So, enough fun and frivolity, off to Denver. Not very memorable, I’m afraid. We drove, we went to the baseball game, and we left for our L---O---N---G trip to Seattle. Although I had no way of knowing what we would come across on this trip, I did NOT plan well for down time! The first part of the trip was great, across the south we had lots of time to do other-than-baseball stuff (like the airplane shop! And Udvar-Hazy Smithsonian Museum, and MOSI is Tampa). But this last bit across the West (Denver to Seattle to San Francisco to Los Angeles) is really L---O---N---G! We are really enjoying the baseball games, but we are ready to go home!

So Rockies vs Brewers may not have been memorable, but the Seattle Mariners vs the KC Royals was VERY memorable! First, we had fantbulous seats, front row on the Club level (same as the press box) on the first base side; second, we watched Mike Montgomery, a rookie, pitch a full-game shutout! You should have heard the roar when he came out to pitch the top of the 9^th (there were some who thought the Mariners would bring in a closer). Ten Ks (strikeouts for those of you not into baseball scoring) and no walks! He got in a bit of a jam in the first inning with 3 on, no outs. But he pitched out of it! A strikeout and a double play, five pitches, and he was out of the inning. He set down the next 17 batters and except for an infield error, probably would have set down 23 or 24 batters. A GREAT game to watch! The only other really memorable game on this trip was the Atlanta/Nationals. Atlanta up by 10/2 in the 2^nd inning, the Nats came back to win with a 2-out, 3-run homer in the top of the 9^th to win 13-12! It doesn’t get much better than that!

So now we’re heading south to San Francisco via our daughter’s house to celebrate Ken’s (her husband) 50^th (oh, that hurts that we have a son-in-law who is 50—not to mention a daughter who is 48) birthday. Then the last five games: Giants, As, Padres, Angels, and oh-how-I-hate-to-say-this, the Dodgers are our last game. And then home.

Rain, rain, go away; come again another day—preferably after our baseball journey. . .

We’ve been through an interesting few days with rain and worry about rain and rain delays and, well, being consumed by the thought of rain. It’s been so rainy that Randy alphabetized the contents of our kitchen cabinets—well, not really but he DID reorganize them. Now I don’t know what we have or where it is! Our baseball schedule is pretty tight and if a game is rained out, our schedule pretty much goes out the window!

For the next week or so our games are PLANNED every other day with between 200 and 600 miles between games! So you can see what a rainout would do! But, so far, so good! St. Louis Cardinals was our biggest worry (so far!) as there was a huge band of rain and their game the day before was rained out. It came close to a rainout but started 30 minutes late and didn’t rain again! Well, it rained again in the middle of the night, but I don’t count THAT.

We were in Chicago for almost two weeks but in spite of that, only got to see one of our friends, Lisa. Things just conspired to keep us from seeing our friends in the area. We were there so long I almost got used to their way of freeway highway/tollway naming: If you ask somebody how to get to I90 or I94, for example, they will look at you as if you came from another planet. It’s NOT I90 or I94 or I290 or I55—nevermind that that is what ALL the highway signs say, Chicagoans call them the Kennedy (I90) or the Edens (I94) or the Eisenhower (I290) or the Stevenson (I55). It’s just what they do in Chicago. I think the only reason is so they can tell who is new to the area!

For the Cubs game we forgot we had planned on taking the L (“Elevated Subway”—yes, I know that’s a contradiction. It’s Chicago.) and I bought a parking spot. Yes, a particular spot in parking lot. In this case, someone’s designated parking spot behind their apartment. It’s sold through a company called SpotHero and it was right across the street from Wrigley. Easy, right? Well, not exactly. SpotHero sort of forgot about the general mayhem that ensues around Wrigley at game time. All worked out in the end but it was a bit of Who’s on first chaos for a while.

It is difficult to see over the person sitting in front of you at Wrigley because of the shallow slope of the seating. But we got to meet Frankie, an avid Cubs fan (are there any other kind?) sitting next to us. We talked off and on the whole game and Frankie found Randy’s camera that he had dropped. One highlight was the homerun ball that Cincinnati hit was thrown back on the field by the fan who caught it. It’s an old tradition at Wrigley that no opponent’s home run ball ever remains in the stadium seating. Presumably, if you try to keep the ball, you will be mugged by one or more Cubs fans. And Cubby Bear got his photo with the Cubs mascot!

Had to go to the highly recommended Old German Beer Hall!

And have brats from Usingers.

This is the row of great restaurants on 3rd in Milwaukee. Across the street is Usingers (and yes we bought some brats to cook), in front of which Randy fell and injured his knee!

On to Milwaukee! Got to do some touristy things in Milwaukee, including a tour of the mansion of a relative of a friend of ours, Fred Wurlitzer. His Great-Grandfather was Frederick Pabst and the Pabst Mansion, the only remaining mansion of a string of them built in the late 19^th century. It has been partially restored to its former glory and it was great fun to think that our friend, Fred, was related to old Frederick!

The Pabst Mansion in Milwaukee

This was part of an exhibit at the Worlds Fair, was moved to Milwaukee and the rest of the house was built, attached to this rotunda.

An entrance to the mansion. We weren't allowed to take photos inside. Too bad, because it is beautifully restored with many pieces of art and furniture given by the family members to the organization that maintains the mansion.

We also went to Discovery World, the highlight of that visit being a tour of really gross things like snot. Yes, snot. The exhibition of Les Paul’s guitars paled in comparison to the snot exhibition. After that, the game was anticlimactic.

Is this gross, or what??!!

Even grosser, if that is possible!

The most memorable thing about the Brewers game and their stadium was just how inconvenient the parking was! First of all, hard to find. Second, it was so far away—HOW far was it? I think the parking lot needed a different zip code. On the plus side, they did have a small (4 people) golf-cart style shuttle FROM the parking lot. But after the game we still had to walk all the way back across a bridge (over the “Select” parking) and go under the freeway, at least 5 miles away, uphill, in the snow, I estimate.

Of course we had to bring Cubby!

Didn't have to worry about rain in Milwaukee!

But Brewers fans do the best tailgating we’ve seen! They just set up like they’ll be there for six hours. And in some cases, I think they were: we were offered a couple of beers after the game from two guys with a keg I guess they didn’t want to haul home. There were practically full kitchens set up, along with games and chairs and tables and TVs (we heard that some fans just come and set up for tailgating and don’t even bother going to the game). All the comfort of home, if your home is in the middle of a parking lot!

But finally we are heading west, young man person! I know, I know, we’ve been heading west since Boston, but I mean West, capital W, and that means toward the wide open spaces. Like the drive from Kansas City to Denver will be.