Up at our customary early hour, we check out of the dump. Check-in time for the nice hotel is 4pm, so we are without a home base until after the Cubs-Rockies game today.
We find a coffee shop for some breakfast, and work on our blogs for most of the morning. We are sitting outside, typing away, looking at photos of our trip. The weather is great. The birds are chirping in the trees, and we are 1,800 miles away from the winter storm that’s about to dump seven to ten inches of snow on Madison. Our spirits lift as the memory of the dump hotel fades with every warm, sunny, passing minute.
We stop to get Curtis some sunglasses and head to HoHoKam Stadium at about 11:30. The game starts at 1:05. We bake in the sun and take it all in. Our seats are in pretty good foul ball territory, just past third base into the outfield. This is a small park, and there really aren’t any bad seats.
We have a hot dog before the game starts and return to our seats. The Cubs get off to a terrible start, walking many batters and committing throwing and fielding errors. The Rockies jump out to a 3-0 lead. The Cubs battle back, and suddenly it’s 3-3. Then it’s 6-6. Finally, the Cubs break it open and go up 8-6, and the score stays that way for the last three innings.
Completely baked by our day of baseball in the sun, we drive the few blocks to our nice hotel, check in, and enjoy their very nice pool. At sunset, we find and eat the best burritos we’ve ever had. Back to our very nice, non-dumpy room, we unpack and Curtis disappears under a huge pile of blankets and drifts off to sleep. I stitch panoramas and put my feet up.