Road Trip:Auburn and home..

The road trip season concluded with our trip to Auburn New York for a visit to the short season home of the Nationals.

Mike and I awoke early and began the drive to Niagara Falls for my first visit there.
I expected a kitschy souvenir-filled place and it was that, but the actual falls were anything but that.
I mean really, you could see all of the various tourist places from "scenic" overlooks, "walking" under the falls and the boats going around and under the falls (memorable to me for where Jim and Pam were married on "The Office") and it was all of that.

However, there was more to them than that. There was a lot of walking (I bet Mike and I walked at least 3 miles round trip by the time that we got back to our car), but the view of the actual falls was so worth it.
I have to be honest as we walked and saw several less-than-impressive falls, I was starting to think that Niagara was way overrated, but then we reached the "real" falls and it was breathtaking!

Mike's not the greatest heights guy so he stayed way back.
I'm not that bad, but I'm not a person that likes to peer down over the side, so the above picture is as close as I am going to get to do that.
Mike and I walked and checked out a few of the shops as I looked for a souvenir for Cherie and Rachel (I would eventually go with a keychain for Rachel and a snow magnet for Cherie) and it was fun looking through those stores, even though I was concerned I was boring Mike a bit!

Mike and I had to make our way back through Niagara Falls and we had scoped out a place near our hotel to eat at-Buffalo Wing Joint and Pub.
We were the first people in the "joint" and I hadn't eaten in almost 24 hours, so I was starved.
I ordered a burger and wings, figuring that if I was full, I'd put leftovers in the cooler.
I walked around the pub while we waited and the decor was cool- This autographed jersey of longtime TRS favorite Jim Kelly was at the table across from us and they had my favorite arcade game of all time (USA vs USSR hockey) that I spent so many hours playing as a high schooler and even occasionally Cherie and later even Ryan.
I didn't play, but I had to have a picture of a game that meant so much to me years ago!
When our food came out, the wings (2nd hottest) were delicious!
Ranking among the top I've had, but I turned to the burger and Bleech!!!
Those of you that know me know I order my steaks very rarely, but my burger medium well-this was barely rare, so it had to go back.
The waiter was very apologetic and offered a new burger, but I took more wings instead-it was a great call!

We left Niagara and moved towards Auburn.
Our original thought was to do Auburn and then hit Rochester after that to mark that park off on the schedule.
However, Rochester would be an hour in the opposite direction of home, so it would be two extra hours on the road. so we stopped at Auburn early to prep team sets.
We were treated so well by Shane Truman, the assistant general manager that I remarked going to the car, that I would almost rather skip Rochester and spent extra time here all things considered and Mike jumped on that idea quickly, so we killed a little time in town before returning to Falcon Field.

Falcon Field is an old-time park that doesn't look its age.
The field is maintained incredibly well and looks much better than many fields that I've seen at higher levels.
The food is varied and reasonably priced and one can tell that the management and community care about its team and its facility.
I really liked Falcon Park and I would prefer it to our other old-school stop in Batavia.
It seemed that the people in the office and in the stands just care more, which isn't a knock on Batavia.
My only issue came in graphing-Mike graphed visiting State College, I took the home Auburn and I had asked beforehand about where I could go and where I couldn't and was told that since there was not a party I could go to an open area very near the clubhouse.

I moved to this area and immediately started knocking off cards and felt I was about to redeem myself for my poor day in Batavia!
It was too easy and I was loading when an older employee moved down and told me "This is a restricted area, you can't be here".
I tried to explain that I had been given the Ok from the asst.GM to be down here from earlier and this response was "the GM sent me here, he outranks the assistant, you have to go".
I finished the two players I was getting and followed directions.
I'm the outsider, I wasn't going to be "that guy" from out of town that acts like a jerk, I hate it when others do that on our circuit and I wasn't going to be that way.
I did ask what the problem was as I packed up and the response was great.
"Well, Jerad Head (Auburn Manager) had been complaining that kids were asking for autographs during the game".
"Well, I'm far from a kid and there are still 45 minutes before the game, so that doesn't fly"...

I moved to a different spot and was able to have all the position players except one sign their Auburn cards, but I would only add one more pitcher because the access wasn't good for them.
The pitcher though was the National's number one pick, Seth Romero.
I had taken three baseballs for Fred and Michael Landucci, thinking that Romero didn't have any baseball cards.
Auburn had done such a good job with the team set (Brigham Hill was one of the NY/Penn top prospects and had left Auburn maybe 10 days before, yet the turnover time had Hill, not in the set) that Romero was included.
Normally, that would be good news, but now I suddenly had 4 cards (I was working on 4 team sets for others) and three baseballs, so I'm not especially smooth with many things, to begin with.
Seth was very nice as I explained I was from Hagerstown, getting stuff signed, etc, and said no problem as he signed he said: "I got you, no problem".
I switched from cards to baseballs along with sharpies to pen and talked with Romero-very cool and the opposite of how he was portrayed to me, which goes to show that you really have to see for yourself about people and even then, things can vary from night to night.
Regular people like anyone else.

We watched about half the game and hit the road for home as we finished our road trip with plenty of driving.
I had a great time on all of my trips this year and I'm already beginning to look at schedules to toss around trips for next year.
Thanks to all of my friends for the great trips this year and now it's onto the offseason, lots of work and replenishing that war chest to be ready for next year...