Beginning of September, I saw that the Cubs would be playing the Milwaukee Brewers (in Milwaukee) at the end of the month. Knowing that tickets would be quite a bit cheaper - and available - I asked Matt what he thought about heading there for the weekend. He replied, "I was actually thinking about that too"! We spent the evening looking at seating and prices - finally finding the "perfect" spot within our price range (yeah, nose bleeds!). We then found a hotel within a few miles of the stadium.
A week later, we had our annual garage sale at our house. My goal was $200 - to pay for our tickets.
We made $210 from the sale - perfect!
We packed up and headed out Saturday morning to head to Milwaukee. We had planned on doing some letterboxing with a few short hikes. Due to extremely hot weather (esp for the end of September), we decided to forego most of the longer hike boxes and focus on the short hikes and drive-bys. We had a pretty good weekend of just over a dozen boxes as well the game!
Will's favorite thing in life right now is Lego Ninjago. He's been waiting "ever so patiently" (lol) for the Ninjago movie to come out. With the movie release, Toys R Us had a Lego build scheduled the same day we would be in Milwaukee. We plugged in the nearest Toys R Us and stopped while out looking for letterboxes. With the Lego build, kids could do a quick scavenger hunt and receive this wonderful ninja wrap (see picture)! I put it on and immediately went in to ninja mode...well, maybe not, but I enjoyed embarrassing the kids!
I should have been looking out for attackers!
We listened to the Saturday game on the radio as we were driving around. We drove around the stadium while the game was still in progress. Unfortunately, the Cubs lost that game when one of the Brewers hit a walk off homer, bottom of the 10th inning.
We headed up to Calvary Cemetery to track down a few letterboxes. What a beautiful cemetery! The entrance alone was amazing!
One of the boxes took us to the back of the cemetery, where we had a great view of Miller Park. The game was over at this point and we could hear lots of whooping and hollering on the interstate (just beyond the trees).
When we finished with the cemetery series, we decided to head back to Miller Park to see if the stadium was a little less full. We wanted to drive around the park a bit and possibly look for a few boxes that were in that area.
As we pulled up, we saw some Cub fans waving at a bus (as the bus was pulling out from a loading dock type of area). We saw that the bus was from Chicago and we immediately knew that the Cubs were right there - Right in Front of Us! We ended up turning around and following the bus out of Miller Park and on to the interstate.
We passed along the driver side of the bus,waving frantically at the people on the bus (not that we could see them) and holding up our Cubs' gear to show that we were fans. We're not sure if anyone noticed (Who's that crazy lady in the minivan?), but it was fun none the less. We got in front of them but ended up losing them in the bumper to bumper traffic. You wouldn't think it would be hard to lose a big bus...but we did it somehow! We ended our time by driving around the downtown area (partly hoping to see the bus again, but also to see the Lake Front and city). It was neat to spot so many Cub fans out and about as we drove downtown! After leaving the Lake behind us, we headed to the hotel for dinner and swimming.
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| Our hotel closet! |
We looked up the times for admittance - parking lot and ball field. We wanted to get there early to have some time to walk around the park - see the statues, etc. When we pulled up to the parking lot (almost a half hour before it opened), we were surprised to see so many cars already in line. We later found out the reason why - tailgating parties!
Once we were parked, we packed our bags and headed towards the stadium. There weren't many people around the park yet, most that were there were out at their cars...making lunch!
We enjoyed our time walking around the ball park - seeing the statues of Yount and Uecker, reading plaques and counting the home plates.
They opened up the gates and we went through security with no problems. Unfortunately, we still had 30 minutes before the main gates would open. A great solution to our time issue - go browse the Brewers gift shop!
We had fun here - enjoyed chatting with a few of the workers who have a deep love for their team and have been around for a number of years. Kaitee found this "fill in the blank" shirt and the kids had a blast making it personal.
Matt found a t-shirt written in Hebrew! He sounded it out for us - Milwaukee Brewers!
Finally, we were allowed to enter the inner gates. We found some fun photo ops and got lunch for the kids (Kid's Eat Free on Sundays).
The ice cream treat was so tiny!! So cute!
No players out on the field yet - we had really hoped to catch them during batting practice again (like we had in Baltimore). We headed out towards the Bullpen to see if any players were out there yet. No luck...
The stadium was pretty amazing!
We walked back to the 3rd base line/dugout, in hopes of seeing some of our Cub players, maybe getting an autograph. Obviously, no batting practice as they were watering the fields!
With just a bit over 30 minutes before the first pitch, we headed up to our seats. We found the escalator this time! Yes, very high up.
We saw a few players come out to stretch/warm up. Not too many for either team though. While sitting, we remembered the Bob Uecker statue - so Matt took the kids over to get their picture taken with Uecker.
Bob Uecker's "Front Row" Commercial. We even caught a glimpse of Uecker during the game!
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| Starting Line Up |
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| Jon Jay leading off |
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| Bryant on 1st, Rizzo Batting |
Top of the 4th, the Cubs broke the zero/zero tie! Jon Jay sliding in for the first run!
Zobrist hit a two run homer in the 7th and Rizzo hit a 2 run double in the 8th. It was great to see our bats working so well!
After Rizzo's double, Matt snapped these pictures of the Cub Fans in the stadium (and there were a LOT of them!)
But the player of the game was Quintana, our pitcher. He went all 9 innings and pitched a shutout. He came up to bat during the 8th inning and received a huge standing ovation - it was wonderful to be a part of!
Our defense was pretty amazing too!
While the bullpen wasn't needed (in the end), we did see a few pitchers warming up throughout the game.
A few fun things throughout the game -
We saw this guy (blue shirt) on the big screen and thought for sure it was Jake Arrieta or his twin!
Of course we got to watch the Famous Racing Sausages!
It was a 90° day, with the sun shining directly on the 3rd base side of the diamond (mental note to stick to the 1st base side if we ever attend a day game at Miller Park again!) We were blessed with the occasional breeze and cloud cover!
It was a fun game - some great hits, awesome pitching (a full game!), some amazing defensive plays and a win which brought our magic number from 4 to 2!
As we hiked down the stadium ramp to get to the ground level, we sang "Go Cubs Go" with a few hundred Cubs fans - it was a great moment, as close to being at Wrigley...without being at Wrigley!
We found the line for "Kids Run the Bases" and then followed the line...wrapping along the first base line, all the way back to the center field area then wrapping itself outside with two zigzags! Holy Cow..."Kids, do you really want to do this?" Just as we asked the kids, we overheard an usher tell another family that the line moves very fast and we'd be running the bases within 15-20 minutes. We decided to stick around. The kids loved the opportunity and will have this memory for years to come. Of course, if Maddie and Alex had their way, they would've stopped to kiss first and third since Bryant and Rizzo hangout there!
We left the ballpark, hungry and very thirsty. Some of us fighting minor headaches. We had one more stop before heading to the van though...
We walked over to the loading dock area that we saw the Cubs' bus the day before. We were thrilled to see Cub fans still standing in that area. We knew we hadn't missed them leaving! We walked over, found a spot to stand and watched. We didn't have a clue if any or all of the players had come out yet. We were hoping to spot a few of our beloved Cubbies - we weren't disappointed!
Side note - there were 4-5 young girls hanging on the front fence, watching for the players to come out. One of them had binoculars and would start yelling as soon as she'd spot a player come around the corner. These young girls had to have been junior high/early high school. OMGoodness! They were yelling "Javy, Javy....I want to marry you and have your baby!". Yup, they screamed that at the top of their lungs to no less than 20 of the players. After listening to these girls for quite a while, we realized why so many players don't wave/make eye contact!
We loved seeing all of our players. I didn't recognize a few of them as they came out - it's hard to recognize them without their hats and uniforms on! Unfortunately, we ran out of space on our memory card so we missed the last few players when they came out (Zobrist, Rivera and Avila for sure). We also missed getting a picture of the buses as they left - with KB and Rizz in the front seats, waving. Oh well. I'll have the memory as long as my mind holds up!
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| Pedro Strop & Felix Pena |
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| Javy Baez & Leonys Martin |
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| Almora saying goodbye to his family |
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| Taylor Davis & Justin Wilson |
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| Kyle Hendricks - one of my favs! |
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| Victor Caratini & Willson Contreras |
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| Tommy La Stella |
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| Coach Gary Jones |
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| Ian Happ & Wade Davis |
Jon Lester, John Lackey & Kyle Schwarber
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| Brian Duensing |
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| Carl Edwards Jr & Jose Quintana |
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| Jen-Ho Tseng |
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| Dillon Maples, Justin Grimm & Addison Russell |
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| Mike Freeman & Mike Montgomery |
Anthony Rizzo, Jake Arrieta & Kris Bryant
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| Jason Heyward |
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| Rob Zastrycny |
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| Coach Dave Martinez |
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| Hector Rondon |
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| Head Coach Joe Maddon |
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| Jon Jay & Coach Tim Buss |
We waved goodbye to the team and headed to our van - stopping to take a picture of the Stadium with the sun shining and no one around. It is a beautiful stadium and the best part - parking was easy to get to (and cheap!).
We had a wonderful time in Milwaukee - a bit cooler weather would've been ideal, but you get what you get! We left Miller Park in search of dinner and air conditioning. Our ride home was uneventful and we arrived home just in time to head to bed!
