June 5 - United States: Denver, Colorado

As Jon packed up the car this morning, I went to the main office to help myself to their bagel breakfast.  The guy told me that they'd just invested in the toaster and bagel-thing, and they've been pleasantly surprised that most people choose the bagels over the doughnuts.  He told me this as I waited for my bagels to toast, and suddenly smelled something burning.  My bagels!!!  So he helped me rescue them, and I thankfully only had one casualty.  The rest of them were saved.

Then we hit the road again, driving to Denver to catch the Colorado Rockies play the LA Dodgers.

Coors Stadium - Dodgers vs. Colorado Rockies

We arrived at Coors Stadium ("a Camden Yards knockoff", says Jon) at 11:30, which was just in time for the end of the Dodgers' batting practice.

The Dodgers Leave the Field

Immediately after, a bunch of field hands came out and prepped the field for the game.  I was amazed at the number of people that this process required, in addition to the number of gadgets required to do it.  At one point, they had to hose down the dirt and this took one hose and six men.  One to hold the end of the hose, and the other five to hold the hose so it didn't touch the dirt.

Finally, the game began!  And the stadium got packed - somewhat surprising for a Wednesday afternoon.  But it was a beautiful day and our seats were spectacular!  I think they're the best seats I've ever had, actually.  We were in the shade with a great view.

Game On!

This is the third and final game in the Rockies and the Dodger series here in Denver.  The Dodgers have won both of the last two games, and they started scoring early in this one too.  That was good, because we were in a very small minority.  There were hardly any Dodgers fans here!  It's not like we felt intimidated, but I don't think I've ever been in a stadium where about 99% of the attendees were all rooting for one team.

In the fifth inning, things started to go downhill.  The Rockies scored a home-run with the bases loaded and the Dodgers never seemed to catch up.  So the game ended in the ninth 8-6 for the Rockies.  Jon pointed out that we've seen four Dodgers games on this trip, three of which ended in loses.  Looks like we're bad luck.

We decided to stay the night just outside of Denver before heading to Rocky Mountain National Park tomorrow night.  So we found a little Motel 6 and settled in for the night.