Road Trip: Florence

   The final day of the trip involved more antique stops for the collection, a stop for dinner, and another park checked off the ballpark passport. 

We started the day with a trip that hadn't been planned originally.

I had thought since we had until the 6 PM start for the baseball game, that it might be interesting to travel to Indiana or Kentucky to the nearest large antique mall and see what they had to offer.

Those two states were intriguing as I was hoping to find some ABA items as both states had teams in the league as well as looking for the usual that I look for.

The decision was Indiana and Exit 76 Antique Mall in Edinburgh, Indiana and I'm glad we had extra time because the GPS took us through about every farm road in the state, which meant we spent about an hour more than we would have needed to arrive via the highway!

This was another excellent Antique Mall and I found a few things that I was looking for - including one that was placed back for a Christmas present (I reserve the right to edit this in a few months to insert the item)!

I did find several programs with the jewel being a 1975-76 Indiana Pacers media guide from the team's final ABA season!

I liked the price even better at three dollars and I added two 1993 NCAA regional programs, several Pacers programs from the eighties, and a 1985 Indiana State vs Evansville basketball program all at fifteen dollars for the bunch.

There was one other thing that I saw early in our visit and was considering purchasing but I forgot about it and I wish I wouldn't have!

I did buy one other item as there were two drinking glasses from Shakey's Pizza with characachers of Richard Nixon (red) and George McGovern (blue) from the 1972 presidential election.

I was tempted to buy both but the Nixon didn't even remotely resemble him, so I only purchased the McGovern glass.

After leaving Exit 76, we stopped in Columbus, Indiana, just outside the state capital of Bloomington and the home of the University of Indiana.

The lunch choice was Jaggers, a regional fast-food chain.

I ordered a burger with egg and ham (I can't remember the name on the menu) with fries and the young lady behind the counter started raving about their chicken, which she claimed was "better than Chick-fil-A", so I ordered it as well.

Well, she was wrong as they were overcooked and scrawny to boot.

It was too bad because the burger was pretty damn good.

By the time we arrived in Florence, Kentucky, we had an hour to kill so I ran into a Target looking for a Cincinnati Reds T-shirt for Cherie.

They didn't have a wide selection, so I would stop and find her one at a Walmart after the game before we left town.

The Florence Ya'lls are a team in the independent Frontier League and are named after the city water tower.

The story goes that the tower had the local mall's name on it but the city changed it to Ya'll due to legal concerns.

The Ya'lls open their ballpark very early, so we were able to go inside and check out the team shop (no baseballs for sale, which was the second time this season that a team shop didn't sell baseballs) for a bit before the players come out to the field.

Thomas More Stadium was in nice condition but nothing stood out as particularly unusual and it seemed pretty typical of a stadium built in its time (2004) with one exception.

Florence, Kentucky is located on the opposite side of the Ohio River and is the location of the Cincinnati area airport, so there is the unusual slice of attending a Ya'lls game as you constantly see (and hear) airplanes taking off and landing.

It's pretty loud and even though it's been years since my concussion, loud noises like that still bother me and while the locals are used to it, it wasn't pleasant for me!

After a quick stop at a nearby Walmart for Cherie's Reds shirt, we headed home with only stops for stretching the legs and bathroom breaks until hitting the homestead.

Florence was the final stadium that I visited for the first time this year, bringing my total to 89.

New Stadiums this year included Worcester, Portland, Somerset, Omaha, Dayton, Cincinnati, Florence, and the new park in Hagerstown.

The trips for next year are unknown as it's becoming more difficult to find parks that are close enough to do in a day.

One trip in the works would add the final minor league stadium on the east coast, New Hampshire, and add it to Fenway Park in Boston.

Once I add New Hampshire, I would have every park from Maine through North Carolina except for two parks in the New York City area (Brooklyn and Staten Island) and I find it unlikely that I go through the hassle of NYC traffic for those two parks.

The nearest stadiums to the south that I would need would be (whichever is closer to these) a new park in Spartanburg, Columbia, Charleston, or Myrtle Beach in South Carolina, while the closest to the west would be one of these Indiana facilities- Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, or South Bend.

I still have one more trip to write about before concluding the summer road trip series and I'll be working on that in the future!