Well, as you may remember, we were a bit late setting off for our big road trip that Saturday morning. Add to that a “quick” stop at Chick-Fil-A, and we were seriously running behind by the time we actually arrived at our Des Moines hotel.
(Side note: the word “quick” in relation to a food stop with a baby is a ridiculous choice. The fact that the Chick-Fil-A was in a mall didn’t help matters, as we never can seem to park close to where the restaurant is when we hit a mall store. And the dumb GPS can’t tell the difference between a mall store and a stand-alone!)
Anyway, we pulled into the Hampton Inn a bit before 6:00. The baseball game started at 7:05, and we had gotten a package deal with the hotel for the baseball game. This consisted of four tickets, a t-shirt, a commemorative playbook, ten dollars in Cubbie Bucks to spend on food or merchandise, and an on-demand hotel shuttle to Principal Park.
So, we lug our stuff into the hotel. I had reserved a two-queen room, which we got…but there was hardly any space once the two beds were in there! So we wrestled Jeremy’s pack’n’play into a corner as best could and quickly got ready for a hot, sunny night at the ballpark.
As luck would have it, another group had just gotten on the shuttle and left for the game when we got downstairs at 6:40. We were already a bit nervous about the car seat situation and the shuttle, and we finally just decided to suck it up and drive. The lady at the front desk asked if we were sure we wanted to do that and offered us four bottles of water when we told her that we were.
We soon understood her trepidation.
After running into a Subway to buy the baby some supper, as we weren’t sure there was any ballpark food he could eat, we headed toward Principal Park. And we almost immediately ran into hoards of people, full parking lots, and road-construction hell in downtown Des Moines.
However, Jeff finally paid some woman $6.00 to park behind a night club that was only a few blocks from the ballpark. By now, it was 7:15, and we trucked off to the stadium. Upon arrival, we discovered that our four tickets were bleacher seats at a mostly sold-out game. We witnessed an altercation between an usher (or whatever they’re called at ballgames) and a disgruntled family who thought they had reserved seats, and, when we asked this man where our seats were, he wasn’t very nice when he answered.
By this time, we were all grumpy and about to give up on this baseball-game idea. The bleachers, of course, were fully in the sun, and it was probably in the mid-80’s, even this late in the evening. All of the kids were hungry, we were all hot, and the prospect of sitting in full sun for at least another hour was not very appealing.
But we were there. So we decided to give it a whirl.
The bleachers were on the opposite side of the stadium from where we came in, so we walked all the way around and up to some free seats. And it was a bit rough at first. Mobile babies and bleachers make for a scary combination, and the sun was HOT.
However, the sun eventually went behind some clouds and then set, we got a pizza with our Cubbie Bucks, and we had a great, albeit far off, view of the action. The Iowa Cubs were playing the New Orleans Zephyrs, and it was a really good, action-packed game. Jeremy made friends with everyone sitting around us, and we ended up having a jolly good time. The home team even ended up winning 9-3, mostly due to a Zephyrs’ pitcher who had a bad run.
Here are the kids in our bleacher seats. Yes, Jeremy is facing the wrong direction and is working on his Subway sandwich.
One benefit of the bleacher seats was that we were close to a play fountain, and, when Jeremy got particularly hard to handle on the bleachers, we took him down to play in the fountain for a bit. When he was thoroughly soaked, we brought him back up and popped him into his pajamas.
We left during the ninth inning, as Jeremy was done, and we wanted to beat the worst of the crowds. As we were walking back to our car, the fireworks started, so we got to watch them as we were driving back to our hotel.
So, what was nearly a giant FAIL turned into a pretty good time!
Up next…the bridges of Madison County. Have a good one!
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