San Francisco to San Diego

Wednesday, April 15

Day 8

We woke up at 5:30 and were out the door by 6:00 for the long drive to San Diego. We were absolutely shocked how easy it was to get out of Oakland. Traffic was flowing in the opposite direction and was very heavy but we had smooth sailing all the way to LA where we finally hit some congestion. No complaints here. Jodi read to Jack about Petco Park out of The Ultimate Baseball Road Trip book and resized photographs for the blog. No rest for the wicked. I thought I would get several novels read on this trip but other than the 5 minutes before sleep, no go. I am however, finding baseball history and visiting the parks to be a lot more fun and interesting than I thought it might be. We stopped at a Starbucks about 20 minutes out of SD to publish a blog post. We pulled into San Diego in the afternoon and stayed at Nancy and Ted's magnificent house. We stayed here one other time a few years ago. Nancy showed us to our room and gave us walking directions to the restaurant we had picked out and to Petco Park. We were so surprised and delighted that we could walk to both quite easily. We had read about a restaurant in The Ultimate Baseball Road Trip book called The Field in the Gaslamp district of San Diego. We walked there and really enjoyed some great Guinness beef stew and ground lamb shepherd's pie. Yummy! Perfectly paired with a Smithwicks. The bartender was from Belfast and had previously lived in Seattle for 9 years and had recently moved to SD. The restaurant was not very busy but we decided to sit at the bar to talk to the bartender and the other folks headed to the game. We talked to a man with a Gonzaga Bulldog t-shirt. Washington seems to be well represented everywhere we go.

Jackie Robinson day, so happy to witness this here!

April 15 is Jackie Robinson day as he made is major league debut that day in 1947.  Our grandson, Jackson, shares his birthday with Jackie Robinson day.  Much better to think of than tax day.  Our son, Nick shares his birthday with the birthday of Jackie Robinson, January 31.

Notice the foul pole in the corner

We walked to Petco and wandered around the park. Petco is a beautiful ballpark in a great location with several features that make it unique, including the Park at the Park, the kids play areas and the Western Metal Supply building that Petco is built around. The corner of the building is the left field foul pole.

The Park at The Park - a great option for watching the Padres for young families

 More on the stadium in the next blogpost. The fans are definitely more casual here, with less in Padre attire. The game started at 6:10 with tons of empty seats. Eventually as the evening progressed, the stadium filled quite nicely. The highlight of the evening was when Jack barehanded a foul ball that came zinging over my head! Very exciting, it was a first for him! It was a fun evening and we walked back to our ATC host house. We wanted to hang out in the Gaslamp quarter but were simply too old and tired!

Foul Ball!