Texas Round-Up

I’m back from my Texas trip and ready to share a thing or two about my adventures:

One: Flying Southwest is awesome. Their web specials and customer service are fantastic. I received a voucher for a computer mishap. Surprised and very grateful. Thanks, Southwest!

Two: Renting a car is ridiculously expensive. $111 for not even three days. Come on!

Three: Thank God Minute Maid Park has a roof. I usually hate domes, but the heat and HUMIDITY were horrible. I loved the climate control! And parking across the street is only $5- yey!

Four: Most hotels around Rangers Ballpark offer free shuttles to the ballpark. This is awesome! And the Outfield Reserve tickets are only $9 (marquee game pricing), making a trip to the park to see the defending AL champs rather affordable!

I did check out the food options at both parks for my new friend Sean Mahoney and found that Minute Maid Park had more variety in its concessions, but Rangers Ballpark went with the “everything’s bigger in Texas” mentality and served up some giant hot dogs and nachos. Here’s a concession slide show:

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On a side note, while I was standing in the Rangers Ballpark outfield I found a plethora of Big Ten fans deep in Big 12 country. I like to think this was a marvelous feat! We had some mature and unbiased (ha!) discussion on who had the best football team… it’s August so football is back on my mind! We did manage to come together to take a picture:

A couple of Penn State fans, a super amazing/awesome Ohio State fan, an Illinois fan, and an unfortunate scUM fan! Some Big Ten love!

I had so much fun at both parks! My one complaint is the lack of cowboy hats. In my northerner head, I expected at least 75% of people to be wearing cowboy hats and boots. Was sorely disappointed, especially after all the boot and hat stores I passed on I-45! I will have a recap of Target Field (a little behind, sorry!) tomorrow and Minute Maid Park by the end of the week. Look for Rangers Ballpark early next week.