Following a refuel at home, I would continue on to spend my next trip with family again. I would head to Wheeling, West Virginia, where my sister was living at the time, to take in a few games with her and her boyfriend.
We would go on two day trips, one up to Pittsburgh to see PNC for the umpteenth time, and one over to Cleveland to watch my sister’s boyfriend’s team. While my sister isn’t a huge sports fan, she has always stayed in enough of the know to understand what is going on in her loved one’s sports worlds, so I always appreciate some time to do these types of things with her. Though, she’ll be the first to tell you that what the two of us really need is just more time to watch figure skating together, a sport we know very similar amounts of information about, regardless of how terrible we both are on ice skates.
I don’t remember much from either of these trips other than a lot of laughter and some much needed time with my sister. There was a festival going on in Pittsburgh the day we went up, so I remember wandering around PNC before the game, but many of my experiences with the Pirates run together, as it was the closest team to us growing up.
The Cleveland game was a bit different, especially since her boyfriend was an Indians fan. (I’m guessing he probably still roots for the Guardians, but they haven’t been together in some time.) He was capable of telling us some things about the stadium and I remember they played the Houston Astros, who would become my sister’s team in later years. I also always look on to the pictures we have of my sister and I on that trip in fondness. Now, if only the games themselves had been memorable.
I would head down to Florida and Georgia for my only solo trip of the season. Stopping in South Carolina (because my mom was nice enough to get me a hotel), I made the two-day trip pretty easily, making it to St. Petersburg much earlier than I had anticipated.
St. Petersburg
I decided that I wanted to catch an extra game with the Blue Jays in town and unexpected extra time, so I set up camp and headed to Tropicana Field. I had been there a few years prior when my Alma Mater, Marshall University won the Beef O’Brady’s Bowl in 2011 (I was part of the band that year), but this would be my first baseball experience in the stadium.
These Blue Jays games were a must on my trip, and catching the extra game led to one of my most exciting games of the trip. The first game was almost a perfect game! We made it 8 ⅔ innings of a perfect game and Josh Donaldson would make a multi-week Top 10 catch in the later innings that I truly had to see to believe. Have you ever seen a player from the opposing team make it about 10 rows back on the baseline and still come up with the ball? It was a great catch, and I got to see it in-person!
Unfortunately, the game happened during a relatively bad storm. So, while I was safe in an enclosed stadium, my tent and camp were getting pummeled. I’d come back to find my tent in an inland lake that evening and sleep in my car for the night while I waited for my tent to dry out. The next day, I spent at camp relaxing and reading. I swear to this day that I saw sharks in the inlet that I was camping on. The Blue Jays pulled out a win in the second game I attended too, and then I was off to Miami.
Miami
My time in Miami was spent with a friend in the West Palm Beach area, who was staying with her aunt for an internship that summer. My first night in town we went out to dinner on the water and then headed to a local saloon to go line dancing. I drove into Miami the next evening for a late game.
Marlins Park would be the only other game I left early that season, though it isn’t like I didn’t get a full ballgame’s worth of baseball in the time I was there. I went into Miami alone, and I had never been before, so I think that the crowds got to my constant anxiety, but I tried to have a good time regardless. When the Dodgers were up 11-2 at the end of the first and I couldn’t ignore how comfortable I was feeling any longer, I headed back to my friend’s house. A storm that evening knocked out the power, so maybe it was a good thing that I left the game early and got back to the house safe.
The next morning I began my trek to Atlanta with an extra day built in. I drove my friend to the Lake Placid, Florida area for a weekend with her family before going on into Georgia. There, I would stay a day at a random campsite and just relax before making my way closer to Atlanta.
Atlanta
I watched my game in Atlanta during the final year of Turner Field. As a person whose family were Braves fans when they were younger, I am grateful to have gotten to attend at this stadium. In fact, all the players I associate with the Braves had long since retired by the time I made my first trip to Atlanta. Most of their numbers lined the stadium by then, in their honor.
I largely took Atlanta as rest time, so I didn’t actually go into the city, just to the ballgame. Still, I got some great shots of the skyline and got to see the 1996 Olympic torch setup. Then, early the next morning I headed toward Myrtle Beach to meet up with my family.
Myrtle Beach
This trip was the last time I was at Myrtle. Though, it has come up as a potential vacation a few times now since then. This is where my family vacationed when we had the chance when we were kids, as it’s a popular spot for West Virginia families. Still, this was the first time I had stayed in a hotel for this type of trip.
There was no baseball for this portion of the trip, but plenty of family time and mini golfing, two things our family still tries to do as often as possible. We had planned on a trip to the amusement park across the street from the hotel on my last night, but a big storm knocked those plans out. I did get a nice sunrise one morning though, which is something I always try to get when I’m on the east coast.
My next trip, sans best friend, gave me the pleasure of introducing my little brother to one of my favorite U.S. cities, New York. We would actually go back not long after for a trip that would include things he was much more interested in, as he is not exactly an avid baseball fan. I wanted to make the trip worthwhile for him though, so much of our time in the city, sans the ball games, was much of what he wanted to do. Although, we were very cognizant of the fact that we didn’t have a lot of time, with only two days in the city, and two evening ball games to attend.
New York Mets
We camped outside of the city, in the Delaware Water Gap, and left for the city extremely early our first full day. Knowing we wanted to visit Coney Island, we made our way there first, finding a great parking option for our second day. It was definitely an eventful morning, too, and is a constant story that our family tells about giving my mother a good scare when her children are in a place without her (He was 16 at the time, so it was one of the first overnight experiences he had been allowed in a place she wasn’t familiar).
In our first few hours in New York, we made an attempt to ride all the coasters in Coney Island. On our final trip, my brother lost both his phone and his wallet, making it possible that our trip was ruined even before it began. Thankfully, we were able to find the entire contents of his wallet, including the cash he was keeping for me, but we never found his phone. Unfortunately, when we called my mother to let her know we were down a phone, the ever-present sirens in New York were blaring right by us.
We took the subway up into Manhattan after that, and walked around for the majority of the day, before making our way to Citi Field. It was another Blue Jays match up, which led to an extremely late night in the city.
New York Yankees
The next morning, we headed back into the city for more genuine sightseeing. We headed towards the World Trade Center Fountains, which had opened just a few summers before. While we didn’t have time for the museum, we would hit it up the next time we were in the city. Then, we headed to Ellis Island. Unfortunately, many of the artifacts from the Island were not on display due to the conservation efforts following Hurricane Sandy a few years before, but we still enjoyed our trip.
We headed toward Yankee Stadium for the evening game against the Marlins. This would be one of only two games that season that I left early. I am not often one to leave a game before completion, but the travel and days running around had gotten to us, and we didn’t have a horse in the race. With an early morning to head to Philadelphia, we decided it was a smart move.
Philadelphia Phillies
Citizens Bank Park was our first stop the next day for an afternoon game against the Orioles. We enjoyed pointing out how it seemed there was more support for Baltimore than Philadelphia, even being a mid-week afternoon game. Then, we headed for the couple of big tourist spaces in the city. We had been to Philadelphia a few years prior, but only for an international soccer match, so it wasn’t a city either of us were familiar with.
We visited Independence Hall, walked around the area a bit, and gazed at the Liberty Bell through its protective glass. Following this brief foray into the city, we headed toward our campsite, in a little place called Kennett’s Square. We enjoyed a nice evening out in the small town and learned of their Mushroom Festival. Unfortunately, I have not been able to make it back for the festival, even though I have always wanted to.
This night at camp would prove to be one of our scariest, and we were extremely fortunate as a flash flood could have gotten us. Instead of leaving at a decent hour the next morning, we actually packed up camp in the middle of the night and headed back to home base. Getting out of Kennett’s Square proved to be difficult in parts, but it was a learning experience that has helped me in other situations later in life.
We headed out for our second trip, and the last one Ross would join me on, for his first trip into Canada. We had plans for the Women’s World Cup in Ottawa, a quick stop to see Niagara Falls, and then off to Toronto to enjoy some time and to allow me to finally come home. I had not been back to Canada since 2006, which was my origin story as a Blue Jays fan. Back then, the stadium was still the Skydome, not Rogers Centre, and there was no chance that Toronto would have gone as deep as they would end up going into the playoffs in 2015.
Observation Tower at Thousand Islands
So, we headed from homebase directly north and crossed into Canada at Thousand Islands, where we stopped to take in the views before heading on our way to Ottawa, where our campsite directed us to a beautiful pub on the water before we went to spend our time with the Women’s World Cup.
World Cup
We actually ended up in Ottawa twice, with our trips to Niagara and Canada in between the sets of group play in the Ottawa stadium that year. We watched all the matches for the group there: Norway, Thailand, Germany, and Côte d’Ivoire. It was Côte d’Ivoire’s débutant (first) appearance and a dominant display by Germany, but we enjoyed every moment. We experienced a double hat trick in one match and found a pub just outside the stadium that we enjoyed much of our downtime.
After the matches, we walked through Ottawa, often searching for important buildings, like the ministries of the national government, and even came across embassy row, which is always a fun place to be during an international event.
Niagara Falls
The trip to Niagara was extremely short, just long enough for my best friend to get his feel. It was a very nice day though, which I can’t say about the last time I visited (taking my mother for the first time in 2019). We got some good shots on this little detour and made the rest of the way to Toronto.
Toronto
Toronto was also relatively short, before we made our way back to Ottawa for our final matches. We did spend a good deal of time at the Hockey Hall of Fame, my best friend convinced me to do the CN Tower again (I have gone up the tower 3 times now, and it never gets any easier), and we returned to my baseball mecca.
The most notable part of the game was actually the group of guys in front of us getting kicked out late in the game. It had clearly been a guys’ night and they showed up pretty rowdy, but it would take a while before they got out of hand. While they didn’t end up disturbing us much (aside from their yelling), likely because we were behind them, it is, to this day, still the only time I’ve seen fans ejected from a game in-person.
Once we returned to Ottawa for our last few matches, we made our trip back to home base, where I had to bid my best friend adieu but, thankfully, got to continue my travels.
Following our time in Chicago, we finished our trip by heading up north the Minneapolis and then making our way back home to West Virginia from there. With this, we experienced our first Blue Jays game of the season (my favorite team) and some of the worst days of our trips. I did learn that planning to camp, even at the end of May, up north always comes with the price of potential freezing.
Minnesota Twins
We arrived in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area in time to set up camp and plan our route for our first full day in the area, which would take us to the Mall of America for some exploration. We were quite disappointed in the visual representation of the downfall of malls once there, but we did enjoy ourselves with the rollercoasters, Lego store, Peeps store, and Ross’s first experience with Bubba Gump’s!
The next day we made no plans other than the 7pm ballgame, so we took our time making it into town. Unfortunately, our plan to just mosey around town until game time was literally rained on. While we still took in the sights, being sure to walk out to the U.S. Bank Stadium construction (home of the Minnesota Vikings) and catching some time with the Mississippi River, we actually did some bar hopping and ran into other baseball fans.
Minneapolis and my best friend would introduce me to poutine, which we would eat even more of in Canada a few weeks later, and I would grow to have an affinity for. We headed to the ballpark around the times gate opened and were reminded of the reason we often don’t take in sporting events together: we were greeted by a rain delay. My best friend and I are notorious for bad luck at sporting events, to the point that we actively did not attend the best season of college football our university’s team had seen in decades so that they could possibly pull of a perfect season (They would lose in their final game 66-67 in double overtime, but it was a wild season!)
The game did eventually get underway, though. And, while we froze on the top row of the ballpark, where the rain and wind constantly hit us. We got to watch 5 innings of baseball where the Blue Jays won and the game got called as a full game. On our train ride back to camp, we met some lovely, fellow Blue Jays fans and had some great conversations about how a person from West Virginia even becomes a Toronto Blue Jays fan.
Milwaukee Brewers
We experienced yet another cold day in Milwaukee as we went to catch the Brewers at Miller Park, but were thankful for an enclosed stadium. After several successful entrances to other ballparks, I did finally end up having my pepper spray confiscated here. (I took up carrying pepper spray that summer instead of my usual pocket knife to make access to games easier, but ventilation systems in enclosed stadiums have different rules.)
The Brewers game was, to this day, the weirdest game I’ve ever been to, only because it was the longest game I’ve ever attended. Ross discovered, and was quite put out, that concessions close during the ninth inning even if it is obvious the game will go into extra innings. We both discovered that the Milwaukee Brewers have a tendency to go for long games, as they were a part of the longest MLB game played in modern ball, with 25 innings being played over 2 days in 1984. In fact, the 1984 game actually ended in a tie after all that work.
We would only make it to 19 innings and it would be won by a walkoff by the Brewers, but, by that point, we just wanted the game to actually be the longest recorded, or to just end already. We had no horse in the race, as the Brewers were playing the Diamondbacks, and our travels were starting to catch up with us. To satisfy his hunger, we ended up eating at a restaurant in the stadium instead of finding somewhere else, and got to watch the ground crews in maintenance mode while we ate. We, sadly, ended that day sleeping in my car, because it got too cold to stay in my tent.
Cincinnati Reds
Originally, I had thought that I went to Great American Ballpark in 2015, but I was mistaken. I did try to get shots of it as we drove through the area on my way back home, but they didn’t turn out. I would return to CIncinnati for the All-Star game that year, but I would only be working at FanFest, as I can’t afford tickets like those.
Still, one of my favorite baseball games took place at Great American. It was 2014 and it was the first time I had seen the Blue Jays play in-person since the first time I saw them in Toronto in 2006. After the second inning, I was a bit down, as the Blue Jays were losing 9-0 to the home team. But, I got to see an amazing thing that reminds me why the Blue Jays should never be counted out. The Jays tied the game in the top of the ninth and took it to the tenth, where they were capable of pulling out a win 14-9. It still, to this day, brought me one of my favorite ballpark pictures and baseball game memories.
Planning my trip took some thinking, as I wanted to attend games at each ballpark I came across, which means there needed to be a home game. There were also a couple other events I wanted to attend that needed to line up with home games, which further complicated the matter. Finally, I wanted to spend most of the summer camping to save on money and to get that nostalgic feeling I had once experienced with my family. Therefore with tickets bought and my car packed, I set off for almost 4 months of travel. Now, this travel was broken up into smaller trips, but I spent very little time at home base in West Virginia that summer.
I made my first trip in early May with my sights set on Chicago. Just a 9 hour drive from where I was living in Huntington at the time, I had made a few trips here before and felt it was the best place to start my trip, plus it lined up with a lot of other things I wanted to do at that time. My best friend also had plans to join me once I reached Illinois, so I set off on my own.
Understanding that I would be heading back to Indianapolis on this trip, I camped south of Chicago, about halfway between Chicago and Indianapolis. I got there in one day and headed into the city on my own that first day.
Chicago White Sox
My first day in Chicago was all about the South Side, but I didn’t plan anything else, because my friend had not joined me yet. So, I made it to U.S. Cellular Field early and decided to go on a walk. That walk ended up being an approximate 6 mile round trip to Soldier Field (home of the Chicago Bears) and back, but it was a nice way to take in the sights and settle into the trip. Unfortunately, I pulled something in my leg shortly after turning back, so I had a bit of a painful trip back to baseball.
I returned to the stadium as the gates opened and headed towards the nosebleeds for my game. Now, when I picked these games, I didn’t look into more than if they were playing at home and if they fit into my schedule for the summer, so I was quite surprised to learn of the event that day: retiring Paul Konerko’s jersey. I’m not a White Sox fan, but even I knew the name Konerko, so it was an exciting thing to witness. I remember the ceremony and liking the stadium, but the game itself holds little memory for me, aside from enjoying a day at the ballpark.
Indy 500
The next day led me to Indianapolis and I picked up my best friend from the train station. Fresh out of college, he joined me to cross off a bucket list item and to enjoy some baseball with me before we parted for our adult lives waiting for us (he had a fellowship and I had graduate school in a different state).
We had acquired tickets for the Indianapolis 500 and headed off for the Speedway. While I am not a race fan at all, I would highly recommend an event like this at some point in your life. The people were great, the atmosphere was invigorating, and the only downside was the sunburn.
Wrigley Field
We finished our portion of this trip with the Chicago Cubs (my NL team) playing the Washington Nationals (my best friend’s team). I had been to Wrigley before and this experience further solidified it as one of my favorite ballparks in the country. We explored the city a little before and after, but the day was largely about the game and the feeling of being surrounded by history.
We headed off the next morning to Minneapolis and a few stops up north before we would return to home base for a few days and head out on another trip.
In the Summer of 2015, I took to the roads and visited 16 Major League Baseball parks. Originally, the idea had been to take approximately 3 months and travel the entire continental United States with my sister, but due to money and her living situation at the time, I had to make some changes. So, the summer before I started my first graduate program, I quit my job and traveled up and down the eastern United States and Canada seeing many places I had never been before.
On top of the MLB locations, I also attended the Ottawa Group Play of the 2015 Women’s World Cup and the 99th running of the Indy500. I saw several historical sites, traveled with many companions, and visited others. The Summer of 2015 still sits with some of my favorite memories and one of the times I had felt closest to my love for baseball.
Follow my journey from my memories and my photography, as I work on a larger collage project I’ve been meaning to do for years. I have broken each section of the trip down into easier ways to talk about them and will be adding the full galleries of my edited work soon!
I have always had a fascination with production, and spent much time as a child thinking I wanted to be a director or a photographer when I grew up. Due to lack of access to these things and developing interests elsewhere, I didn’t get much experience in either of these professions or even get to explore them in anything other than daydreams as a child.
I would grow out of my interest in directing pretty early on, though I do truly believe that it influenced my becoming a cinephile. The photography aspect would continue to fascinate yet allude me. Then, I came to the University of Michigan in 2017 and I suddenly had access to more things, including editing software that I couldn’t afford on my own.
With that, and a single picture, I rededicated my interest in photography and began to rebuild a brand I had once only thought of as a dream. It was extremely slow going, at first, with my first edit happening in the Fall of 2019 and no regular editing occurring until late 2020, but there was one picture that started it all, and began the work I enjoy today, nature photography.
Pool Pride
Pool Pride was just a camera photo I took when my brother visited me over his Spring Break one year. The photo really stood out to me though, and I wanted it to actually look the way I imagined. So, I bumbled my way through my first use of Photoshop and came out with the photo you see here. And, I got hooked.
While I still am learning immensely, I am so excited that I made this photo into something I always saw it as and that I was given the motivation to continue to teach myself. This one edit would lead to the dedication of buying a new camera for more professional photos. It would further have me learning how to edit photos and how to teach myself new tricks. Then, it would develop into a year-long goal of blogging and editing that would reintroduce the idea of a full personal and professional website for me.
With my continued work to make this site fully functional in the myriad of ways I need it to, I have introduced a section containing my full photography galleries, broken into a few categories to keep them a bit more organized. While you can continue to follow my photography posts on my Instagram, the Photo Galleries section of this site will make it easier to find specific works.
Some of the categories include:
2021 Hiking Challenge: Join me through my blog or my photos with the 52 hikes in 52 weeks that I completed in 2021.
West Virginia: My home state is gorgeous and I love to share my time there.
Michigan: My new home is a large land to explore, and I do it quite often.
Individual Edits: Not all of my work is full galleries, so check out some of my individual work.
Other Adventures: Check out some of my other adventures, with photography from trips like Eastern Europe in the works.
People: While I am not a big photographer of people, I have done a couple sessions, which can be checked out here.
I’m getting back out to the trails soon and hope to expand more of my writing in the coming months, but the main changes of the site are in place, and I hope y’all continue to join me.
I have spent the last week really figuring out how I want to present myself here, and here it goes: I’m hoping to strike a real balance between the personal and the professional and do something I’ve been meaning to get back in the digital space for a few years now, a portfolio.
So, check out what I’ve changed! I plan on spending more time on honing it as I get a chance, but I am also pretty happy with what I’ve accomplished. This doesn’t mean that I’m going to stop writing here though! Actually, I’m just a few weeks out from my first hike of the year, and you’ll be able to enjoy all the blogging I’ve already done.
Now, you can also just check out my professional work. Whether you are interested in my personal endeavors (like hiking, writing, and photography), or my professional ones (at the University of Michigan, the International Women’s Baseball Center, or my production company), you can now get it all here.
I’ve added more pages, rearranged my links, and updated items to the best of my ability, so feel free to look around!
Raven K 