Prior to the start of the baseball season, this past weekend was one particular weekend that I had mentally earmarked as one of weekends that I was looking forward to the most. Sure, I have ambitions and plans of grandeur when the summer arrives, and in a perfect world, I make every flight, the weather is never an issue, and I’m able to tackle four new MLB and six new MiLB ballparks before the start of July. However, things haven’t worked out so kindly throughout the span of the last few weeks, and be it poor weather, unlucky flight conditions or both, a lot of my trips have been derailed and ultimately cancelled, leaving me kind of distraught, and with more time to brood and go crazy.
But this past weekend was undoubtedly the one weekend I was looking forward to immensely, because it combined several things going for it that if they all worked out, would lead to a successful good time.
Fortunately for me, with the weekend now a time frame in the past, I can say that basically everything did work out, and it was a successful good time, and I’m quite pleased with it, to the extent that it’s worth writing about, because frankly, I think a lot of my posts throughout the last few weeks have kind of had an undertone of disappointment or an unhappy sentiment to some of them.
Over the weekend, I drove a big circle that saw stops in Asheville, North Carolina and Kodak, Tennessee, before coming back to Atlanta. For the most part, I’ll cite the pursuit of minor league baseball parks as the reason for embarking on this trip in the first place, which isn’t the least bit false, but ultimately it boils down to the simple desire to explore.
I’ve been to neither Asheville or Kodak, and the fact that both towns had minor league ballparks I’d never been to, and that they’re within reasonable roadtripping distance made them easy places to choose to visit. It also didn’t hurt the fact that Asheville was giving out a bobblehead, and since I’m 14 at heart, I had to have it.
The bottom line is though, in my opinion, baseball has been the greatest excuse to ever travel and explore, because when the day is over, baseball is what gets me to visit these places, but exploring the places themselves is usually the best part about making trips like these.
I’ll save the details for when I ultimately post baseball pictures from the two places individually, which will give me some space to go a little bit more in-depth about them, but for the time being, I have to say that this was the type of traveling weekend that I’ve absolutely been longing for, and I can very easily say that I had a wonderful time driving in my own car to places I’d never been to before, and experiencing some new things.
