Day 8 - Milwaukee

Friday, July 10th. Today marks the 1/2 point of our Midwest tour. We're both a little tired, but no worse for wear. Michelle really enjoyed Chicago and she's a little sad to leave. She'll most likely convince Marshall to come back for another vacation at some point down the road. Marshall is excited for Wisconsin, America's dairy land and home of the Miller brewery.

Today was an easy drive. We left Chicago around 11 am for the 2 hour drive north to Milwaukee. The construction and traffic were heavy. Here's a sign announcing an Obama Stimulus Package. It looks like Illinois is actually using its Federal money, I think New York's is still tied up in politics:


We stopped off at the Brat Stop in Kenosha, Wisconsin for some lunch. This place is heaven - brats, fried cheese curds and Green Bay Packer fans. 2,500 calories later, Marshall was content:




We drove to Miller Park to buy tickets for tonight's Brewers/Dodgers game. Michelle was really excited the Dodgers were in town - she even wore her Yankee shirt to honor Joe Torre's tenure with the Yanks. Thankfully we stopped by the stadium in the early afternoon, the game was completely sold out. Luckily we were able to get 2 tickets for the bleachers - $20 each.

We checked into the hotel and headed back to the Park. The traffic was Long Island-style terrible! Marshall was really annoyed. As soon as he saw the crowd of people in the parking lot, his spirits turned. This place was like tailgating at a Jets game! All the fans were grilling brats, drinking MGD and playing bag-o. Too bad we didn't know about this earlier. Marshall would have definitely convinced Michelle to come to the parking lot in the early afternoon:


Miller Park is kind of ugly from the outside - like a big green space ship with a retractable roof. That's Michelle in the foreground wearing her Posada jersey:



The inside of Miller Park is really nice:



We lucked out, all Brewers' bleacher creatures won a free tee-shirt:


Here's Marshall meticulously filling out his scorecard:


Brewers home games are famous for their sausage races during the 5th inning. During today's game, the Italian sausage squeaked out a close victory over the Polish kielbasa. The camera battery was dead, so we don't have any pictures. Marshall decided to challenge the sausages to a race of his own:



Final recap: This was the most exciting game we've seen on this trip. Lots of offense (7 home runs), plenty of star power (Ryan Braun, Prince Fielder, Manny Ramirez, Matt Kemp, Joe Torre, etc), thousands of rowdy midwesterners, and Trevor Hoffman and his AC/DC entrance music.

Memorable moments: booing really loud every time Manny Ramirez came to the plate, chanting "cheater cheater cheater" whenever they announced Manny's name, Manny hitting a 2-run home run as redemption, Trevor Hoffman blowing the lead in the bottom of the 9th, Matt Kemp hitting a 10th inning grand slam. Final score in 10 innings: Dodgers 12 / Brewers 8