Road Trip Day 1

The end of the school year meant a severe lack of posting due to other commitments, but I was hoping to pick it up over the summer. However, I've kept pretty busy at the start of the summer too. Currently, I'm in the midst of a week or so long road trip, so I'll attempt to get a post or two up by making this a music blog / travel recap for the next few days.

This marks the second year in a row that my friend Karl and I have taken a baseball themed road trip. Last year, we went to Pittsburgh to see the Pirates play at the wonderful PNC Park (which reminds me of one of my favorite Onion articles ever) and then looped back to Cleveland to see the Indians take on the Twins. This year, we decided to try to mix in some minor league ball games as well.

Our trip started from Iowa City, and we drove about an hour to Burlington, Iowa to see the Burlington Bees take on the Quad City River Bandits in Midwest League Low A minor league baseball. The game featured $2 tickets and $1 hotdogs, pop, pizza, and popcorn. This is the 3rd Low A stadium I've been to (the others in Beloit, WI and Cedar Rapids, IA), and I really enjoyed the atmosphere. The weather was beautiful, and I have a new favorite minor league player, as Justin Wright for the Quad City team managed to pitch 3.1 innings, retiring every batter he faced and striking out 7 in the process. After the game, a member of the grounds crew went onto the field to take out the bases with a dog in tow. Things like that are why I love minor league baseball. The stop in Burlington was a great start to the trip.

From there, we punched directions to St. Louis into our phones, which led to an interesting drive. The drive from Burlington to St. Louis is about 4 hours, and for the first 2.5 or 3 hours, we were almost exclusively on small roads where we saw more cows, horses, sheep, and goats than people. I don't think we were on any one road for more than about 30 miles, but I think I like the random back roads through small towns drive a lot better than just hopping on a freeway and going. Once we finally got back to major roads, we ended up stopping at a Taco Bell for supper. After spending about $4 on my meal, I realized that between the $1 food at the game and the equally cheap food at Taco Bell, the most expensive thing I purchased all day was my $2.50 brewed coffee before we hit the road in the morning. I don't anticipate being able to spend under $10 a day on the whole trip, but it was a good start.

We arrived in St. Louis at my grandma's house around 8 and proceeded to watch some Criminal Minds. I had never seen the show before, but holy crap was it intense. I don't know how my grandma ever falls asleep after watching shows like that. I was on edge with my heart pounding by the time the episode was done. All in all, the first day was a lot of fun. I'll update with more about the actual time in St. Louis later, but my 30 minutes of allotted internet at this Panera is running out.

Since we spent most of our first day in Iowa, and to tie this into a loose music theme, here's a William Elliott Whitmore song from his forthcoming album (that I just learned about while looking for a song and am now super excited for!). I can't vouch for it cause I don't have headphones with to preview it, but almost everything else he has done is great, so I can't imagine this being any different.

William Elliott Whitmore - Everything Gets Gone by antirecords

Also, to follow along to our travel exploits in (closer to) live time, check out my Twitter @RyneVanK or my posts along with Karl's under the hashtag #roadtriplivetweet