Vacation 2010 - The Rundown

The August moon rises over the Great American Ball Park scoreboard Aug. 27

So my wife and I are back from vacation. We road tripped back to my home state of Iowa seeing a bunch of cool things along the way. (See the coolest site RoadsideAmerica.com) Also along the way I got a few extra blog topics.

The obvious topics are the rundowns of the three games we saw. My wife and I traveled to Burlington, Iowa and took in a Bees game. The Burlington write-up will also give me the opportunity to mention again the last time I was there, with my dad. It involved A-Rod.

We also traveled over to Omaha with my folks to see the ninth-to-last game ever at Rosenblatt Stadium. It was team card set night. We got two. On the way there, we stopped at the Bob Feller Museum in Van Meter, Iowa, and saw some very cool stuff there, including a notable Babe Ruth bat he borrowed from Feller. More on that when I get there. Both Rosenblatt and the Feller museum are among the 101 Baseball Places to See Before You Strike Out, a great book my wife got me a couple years ago.
The August moon rises over Community Field in Burlington, Iowa, home of the Midwest League's Bees, Aug. 23

I also got some card topics. My wife and I always try and stop at the Paul's Discount Store in town when I get home. They have lots of cool stuff. On this trip, I spotted a bunch of jumbo packs of junk-era cards, "The Ultimate Super Jumbo Pack." The coolest part, they weren't that overpriced, 50+ cards for a buck. That's $1. They had six of them, I grabbed all six.

I'll probably make a post for each. I have yet to open them. I bet there's some CMC players in there. Then I picked up new packs at a couple Casey's General Stores we stopped at. Those I did open. And I got some cards to talk about there, too.

The August moon rises past the Rosenblatt Stadium scoreboard in Omaha, Aug. 25

On the way home, we stopped in Cincinnati and, as I donned my Andre Dawson Cubs jersey, saw the Cubs lose to the Reds and Jay Bruce hit three moon shots over the fence for home runs. The Bruce home runs showed how little I've paid attention to my fantasy team this year. I've kept the pitchers up and made changes here and there. With Bruce, I knew I'd had him earlier in the year, but wasn't sure if I still had him. I did. And, by the way, thanks to his performance, my Sch'dy Kittenz snuck into the playoffs.

Aside from Bruce's fireworks, it was also real fireworks night. My wife loves fireworks and these didn't disappoint.

Speaking of moon shots, the pictures above are my own moon shots. I snapped the pictures above at each of the three games we saw. The weather was great for all three games and the moon made striking appearances at all three.

Cards, games, a museum and the moon. We also packed in non-blog-related stuff like a roller derby match, two duck tours, many Roadside America stops and saw squirrels that were white. My wife often says we try to pack too much stuff into our vacations. I don't know, I don't see it.