Picking up from where we left, I visited the Mall of America to replace my torn jeans and tick this location off the list. Calling this mall massive would be an understatement. In fact, even calling it a mall doesn’t do the place justice. It is more an amusement park with an attached aquarium, cinemas and every dining experience under the sun (I went with Buffalo Wild Wings – we all know how that’ll turn out).
Following this, it was time to drive north of Minneapolis to catch up with my old mate from my Santa Monica Rugby playing days, none other than Phil who is about as mad as a cut snake but always an awesome time.
Phil and I picked up exactly where we left off and had a hilarious night at the local dives before retiring to bed to begin the next leg of the road trip down to Milwaukee.
The drive would take us from Minneapolis down South to the state of Wisconsin and then East to the city of Milwaukee based on the lake. It was a fairly simple drive but what made it great was the fact I had good company and was also able to split the load – so thanks for that Phil!
Arriving in Milwaukee at 3:00pm, we went directly to the must see attraction of the city which is of course the Miller Brewery tour aka the number 2 best selling beer in the country (the tour guides kept hammering this point home for some reason and never mentioning by name the number one seller – hint, it starts with “Bud” and it makes you wiser).
In all honesty, it was a really fun tour and I did learn some interesting facts about Milwaukee’s brewing history, the landscape and after sampling the Miller Lite (how it’s spelt) why Australian beer will always be superior.
Following our tour, it was time to get to our hotel, shower and be ready for what is the halfway point of the “Thirty before 30” trip, game 15/30 – to see the hometown Milwaukee Brewers (named after the brewing history, get it), take on division rival the St Louis Cardinals.
The stadium itself is very impressive and is the third (after Phoenix and Houston) that I’ve been to on this trip which has a retractable roof (on this particular night it would be closed). With the Brewers playing in their “throwback” yellow and blue uniforms, the crowd was pumped for a big Friday night classic at the ballpark.
Both teams were playing strongly with St Louis building a 1-run lead in the third inning. With the contest being tight, hits were few and far between however Milwaukee would eventually level the contest with a solo home run by the miracle man himself Jesus Aguilar (the home run also included the Brewers mascot sliding down a huge slide – again, I’m not sure why however Phil informed me that the two things the state of Wisconsin does best is cheese and water slides – so whilst it doesn’t make sense it totally does make sense so we’ll just go with it and watch the video below for some idea of how it looks).
With the scores tied 1-1 and tension building, it looked like we were headed for extra innings to ultimately decide a winner. Then, once again like what occurred at the recent Rangers game in Dallas, baseball happened.
Stepping up to the plate in the bottom of the ninth inning, our man Aguilar would once again hit a solo BOMB that would have the crowd in raptures and ultimately win the game for the Brewers in dramatic walk-off fashion. It was awesome to experience this and see the hometown Brewers fans cheering as if they won the World Series (well I guess beating up on St Louis is pretty cool).
After the game, Phil and I kicked on for a little bit before retreating to our hotel for a (relatively) early night before beginning the next leg of our journey driving further East (and into a new time zone) to Cleveland Ohio to watch the red hot Indians (and coolest logo in sports) at their ironically named stadium “Progressive Field”.
It’s been awesome having Phil involved and I’m excited for the next part of this crazy journey in Cleveland Ohio – you can whet the beak with this tourism video below.
Until then, have a good one!
Thirty before 30 