Sunday, June 5, 2011 - Cleveland, OH to New York, NY and Recap

Final day of vacation. We have left Cleveland and are meandering through Ohio!


Even I-80 in Ohio wants to make sure we get to NYC! The long road home.


Pennsylvania Mercer County Lines us?

It's all downhill from here.

There is a rainbow in there, we promise!

MADE IT! A relatively short trip this year (see the blogs from the past few years for some higher mileage totals).
We had a fantastic time this year (as expected) seeing family, friends, music, racetracks, art, nature, architecture, funny sights and BASEBALL!!! 13 games in 13 days, although we will have to go back to Dayton because we left in the bottom of the 2nd inning, about half way through a 2 1/2 hour rain/storm delay. And we had already been to Progressive Field in Cleveland, so we attended full games in 11 new ballparks, bring our career total to 112 ballparks visited together over the past 13 years. This year, Stephanie's Cleveland-related teams (Kinston, Lake County, Columbus and Cleveland) went 3-1 and Todd's Yankee-related team (Scranton-Wilkes Barre) went 2-0 with us in attendance, so it was a good trip with the exception of the Indians loss in the last game of our journey.

It was great to see so many familiar faces along the way (including at the pre-tour concerts that Stephanie had a hand in putting together) including Karen, Nicola, Linda, Marybeth & Jim; Will; Johnny & Crock; Steve, Tommy, Jen, Andrew & the TFL support crew; Sylwia; Sadie, Nathan, Laura, Jon & Steffi; Jason, Jacob & Olivia; Anita & Shelly; Jason & Andrea; Steve & Barbara; Andy and Janet; Amy; Jonesy & Jessica; and Alicia. Thanks for joining us for a ballgame, meal, drink and/or putting us up for a night(s) at your personal bed & breakfasts. It was also great to meet new friends Conner; Chelsea; Daniel; Mike & Steve; Jessy, Mackenzie, Jason, Mikey & Leann; Snowball; Nique'; Maddie; Dylan; Gabi; and Erin, Jack & Jack. And we can't forget to mention our new costumed pals Keyote; LouSeal & Krash; Liberty & Belle, Eva & Evan; Ozzie; Rowdie; Johnny; and Stomper. Hope we didn't inadvertently omit anyone.

We hope you enjoyed the blog as much as we loved putting it out there for everyone to see. Thanks to all those who followed our travels online and commented via phone, text, e-mail, facebook and in person.

In light of the recent floods, tornados, storms, etc that have wreaked havoc on the Midwest, we have decided to make this year's entire roadtrip donation (including the additional amount from Jason B) to the Red Cross (http://www.redcross.org/) to help the affected areas recover. Along our trip we also noticed a couple shirts from the MS walk, in which we also participated in April. Memorial Day was the mid-point of our trip, which had us think about Disabled American Veterans and the Wounded Warrior Project, among other charities that support the men and women who put themselves in harm's way to protect our country and our freedom. If you really enjoyed our postings and have a couple dollars that you can spare, please donate to these or any other worthy charities to help others who are not as fortunate.

We're looking forward to next year's trip already. Where should we go? Minnesota's got a new ballpark, which could also mean Wisconsin, Chicagoland, Michigan and return trips to Toledo and Dayton so we can actually see full games in those ballparks. We've also discussed Quebec City, which could include some games in New England. From NYC, is it too far to drive to Texas; there's a lot of stadia between here and there that we'd still like to check out.

See you next year (if not sooner),
Your Baseball Roadtrippers Stephanie and Todd