I had decided I wanted to avoid an expensive flight from San Francisco to Omaha, NE.

So this was the way-more-expensive but also far more interesting three-week plan I had come up with a while back, in an effort to get to Lincoln for a high school journalism workshop where I teach a yearbook class each summer:

Fly to Atlanta with the fam. Go to a Braves game (worst weather ever). Spend a week in the mountains of North Carolina with extended family (a lovely time). Drive back to Atlanta in order to fly to Detroit (a very early morning trip to the airport). Spend a few days with family and catch up with friends in Michigan (also a lovely time). Go to a Tigers game with 42 of my journalism-teaching BFFs (amazing and full of happy tears). Drive to Chicago with a friend (more rain, good company, sadly no game). Fly to Minneapolis for a Twins game with another friend (threatening rain but eventual beautiful weather and excellent conversation). Pick up a rental car at the Minneapolis airport and drive to Kansas City (six boring but relaxing hours). Go to Royals game and Negro Leagues Museum (knocking items off the bucket-list). Drive to Lincoln for the workshop (fun!). Fly home to San Francisco (happy to be home!).

It was a great trip overall!

I always tell people that I love going to ballgames with friends, and I love going to ballgames by myself. Both of these are fabulous. This game in Kansas City was the only one that I was attending solo, so I was looking forward to doing a LOT of wandering around the stadium.

I woke up in my cheap airbnb in Minneapolis around 6:30 a.m. in order to catch an Uber back to the Minneapolis airport to pick up the rental car that would get me to Kansas City and then on to Lincoln. The game at Kauffman against the Mets started at 3:00, so I knew that I’d need a pretty early start in order to get there on time. It’s about 430 miles.

My driver was super nice, but we both had a heck of a lot of trouble figuring out how to actually get to the rental office at the airport; it’s always pretty mindless when you get off a flight and can follow the endless signs to the car rental. But when you’re DRIVING to it, at least in Minneapolis, there aren’t many signs. It requires significantly more concentration. We ended up in the correct garage, eventually, but drove up one of those parking garage circles and passed the right floor, then couldn’t get off of it until we reached the top and then descended the EXIT circle. Which meant we had to go all the way back around the airport in order to get back to where we just were. So much for getting an early start! Eventually I got out at the right floor, but then realized that I wasn’t at the rental car ENTRANCE, I was at the DROP-OFF spot. Uh oh.

Budget had one of those express check-out spots but I didn’t have whatever membership I needed in order to use it, so the woman at the counter directed me back down a few floors to register for the car. When I got there, unsurprisingly, the line was about an hour long. And here’s where I share my best travel hack of the trip:

I signed up for the express check-out on my phone while standing in the line. I wasn’t exactly sure this was gonna work, or that it was free, but I figured it couldn’t hurt since it would be a long time in this line anyway. And guess what? It worked! Once I hit submit, I wandered back up to the escalator to the fancy members-only office. I was on my way in five minutes, feeling pretty smug about the number of people who had been left in my rental car’s dust.

Once I got on the road, it was mostly a whole lotta nothing. I couldn’t even plug my phone into one of the car’s ports to listen to my nerdy “Lord of the Rings” podcast, since they were all the old-style USBs. I can now tell you there are 136 country radio stations on the way from Minneapolis to Kansas City. I listened to 30 seconds of all of them.

But I made good time and was able to check in to my KC hotel in plenty of time to walk over to the game.

The Lotus Hotel where I stayed was nothing particularly special, but it does offer the closest location to Kauffman; it’s no more than a 10 minute journey from the lobby to the ballpark gate. While it’s close, it’s also a rather weird walk; you cross the ‘George Brett’ bridge over the interstate; a quaint sign likely older than Bobby Witt, Jr. marks the crosswalk. I did later realize that the entire strip of highway is ALSO named after Brett, so then I didn’t feel as bad for him. Once you get across the bridge, you have to scamper down a couple of embankments to get to the parking lot; it’s not exactly treacherous, but the potential for a stumble was enough that the guy walking with me, who looked a lot like Bob Seger, wasn’t going to risk it. “I got a bad knee,” Bob explained. I was gonna try it anyway.

The hike into Kauffman reminded me a lot of the time Leigh and I walked down the hill from Dodger Stadium to our hotel in LA’s Chinatown. It was clear in both cases that this was not really the expected avenue to or from the ballpark, so no one really bothered to maintain or mark it. I WANT to be able to walk into a stadium; it’s what makes so many of the downtown ballparks so great. But in Kansas City or LA, if you are using your feet to get from hotel to game, you are one of maybe a dozen other people who might be using the same goofy route.

Still, despite the mountain climbing on the way there, the walk itself was quick. And in the parking lot were a good number of tailgaters, despite the fact that the lot felt like it was the same temperature as the sun. Mets’ fans travel quite well, so a good number of them were New Yorkers, transplanted or otherwise, tossing around footballs, redolent in their Pete Alonso jerseys.

About a half-hour before game time there was zero wait at the right field gate, so I was inside the stadium before I knew it. I snapped a couple of pics of the nearby food options and bee-lined for the fountains for some photos. There I chatted with a nice older woman who told me how much she loved Northern California; her daughter had gone to Stanford a while back, so we were able to make some immediate Palo Alto connections. I leaned over to take some pics of the fountains, wondered aloud how many people had dropped their phones in the waterfalls over the years. “Probably a lot!” my new friend said.

The stadium is great; Royals’ fans are passionate and knowledgeable, and the employees running the show clearly value the patrons. It’s a little time-warpy, but in a lovely way; you feel like it probably would have been a similar gameday experience going to a game in 2005, or 1985.

Kauffman is everything that COULD have been in Oakland at the Coliseum. The two structures are roughly the same age, but in Kansas City they’ve clearly kept up with the times and the building is in excellent shape; the concourses seem almost brand new and nothing is crumbing. There’s a cool, unique look to the grandstands, where a giant enclosed half-dome encircles everything behind the plate and part way down the baselines. Despite the heat, a good number of the seats are in the shade.

They also have what might be the best in-park Hall of Fame I’ve seen. Maybe it’s partly because it was so breathtakingly air-conditioned inside, but truly, this is a fabulous spot to spend an inning (unfortunately for me, the inning I picked was the fourth, so I missed Juan Soto’s two-run blast into the water, which was half of the scoring in a 3-1 Mets’ win). A lot of great Royals were part of the team’s lore during my baseball formative years, and I remember them all like they were playing yesterday: Dan Quisenberry and Willie Wilson and Frank White and Hal McRae and of course, George Brett. You can get lost in that place for much longer than an inning.

Saturday’s game was a good start for former Oakland Athletic Frankie Montas, who made quick work of Bobby Witt and the rest of the Royals. It was a tight 2-1 game until the ninth inning, when the Mets added on an insurance run to put the game out of reach; at that point the ineptitude of the Royals’ offense made it feel like a 2-run lead in the ninth was basically impossible to overcome.

By that point in the game I had roamed quite a bit. After finding a ‘Beyond’ Brat in the outfield concourse and covering it in pickles, jalapenos, tomatoes, mustard and onion, I found an empty row in the left field bleachers and devoured it and washed away the pepper spice with a Summer Shandy. Ahhh.

Just after finishing my brat, it was time for the National Anthem, which included an army helicopter flyover, as it was Military Appreciation day at the park. They were honored on the field later in the game and got a nice reception as they took their seats a section over from where I was.

I also chatted for a while with a father and son combo; the kid caught my eye because he was keeping score, which always fascinates me. They were thoroughly enjoying the game, despite the home team’s lack of success.

I wandered from there to the approximate vicinity of the $15 ticket I had gotten the day before, up behind home plate. It was a long journey up that way, around and around a ramp that reminded me of the one in the airport parking garage where I started my day. I was getting a little dizzy.

The views from up top were solid as well, so I took in a few innings there before heading back to where I started, near the fountains. A sign was up in front of the fountain seats indicating that it was a private event, but since it was the start of the ninth inning I figured I’d ask anyway. And the security guy, much like every other person I met in Kansas City, was super nice; he explained that they’d already drank all their beer and ate all their food, so it seemed fine if I wanted to explore the fountain area. It’s super cool!

The water itself actually smells really good (I wasn’t expecting this), and it feels cooler too, temperature-wise, despite the fact that it’s all in the sun. I managed to see a sweet sliding catch by the Mets’ Tyrone Taylor while I was leaning on the railing in center. I might have caught it (the moment, not the ball) on my camera, but my phone had died about 10 seconds before. If you watch the highlight and squint just right, you can see a blur that looks like me, watching the action.

Since the game was over by about 5:45 and I didn’t have much to do for the rest of the evening, I decided to chill in the hotel for a bit and then try to find a good plant-based spot for dinner. I found it, alright: Treehugger is about 15 minutes away and it is absolutely fantastic (and hoppin’, I was happy to see!). Everything on their menu looks delicious, but I went with the “meatloaf” Sammie and the Reuben Fries. It was basically enough food for two people and I’m not ashamed to say I just about finished all of it. I spent a quiet night relaxing, went to bed early and woke up the next day to head for my last baseball-related stop on the trip. It proved to be the most powerful.

The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.

(That’s next time!)