May 1 – 3
After a 4+ hour drive home from Verona, WI, I was home long enough to swap suitcases, load Brandy and Ash up in the car and we were on the road for another 4+ hour drive to St. Louis.
Brandy made arrangements for a trip to St. Louis to see the Dodgers at Busch Stadium as a Christmas present to me. The idea initially was to drive down Thursday, April 30, after work, and go to the game on Friday the 1st and drive back Saturday, or maybe even stay another day and drive back Sunday.
Shortly after purchasing the tickets for the game and reserving an AirBnB, I got word that I was expected to go to XGM for the Transplant Advisory Council presentations, which were scheduled for Thursday and Friday, April 30 and May 1. Obviously we were not going to make it to the May 1 game so I called the Cardinals’ box office and they were kind enough to exchange our Friday tickets for Saturday tickets.
We adjusted our AirBnB reservation to check in Friday, May 1st instead and then we waited.
Driving
The drive to St. Louis was relatively uneventful, though Ash is not traveling well these days. He sits and pants and drools relentlessly, assumingly from anxiety. This is only a recent problem, the first exhibition of this behavior seen during my birthday trip to New Orleans in 2024. A visit to the vet recently resulted in a prescription for Trazodone which, on our most recent trip to Canon City, worked wonderfully. He pretty much slept the entire trip. We low-dosed him this time though, due to issues with timing of the doses, so the med didn’t work at all.
We pulled in to our AirBnB just after 9:00 and a couple of quick trips got the car unloaded in no time. I set up on the pull-out couch while Brandy took the queen bed upstairs and we called it a night immediately.
Gateway Arch National Park
The next morning, I got up and took Ash for a quick stroll around the block, then ran to get us coffee from Goshen Coffee Roasters. When I got back to the AirBnB, I reserved us a parking spot in a large parking garage centrally located between the Gateway Arch and Busch Stadium, as well as tickets for the tram up to the top of the arch.
When Brandy got up and dressed, we headed out, making a couple of stops at some thrift stores before heading to the Arch. We grabbed a spot right next to the elevators down to the ground level, crossed a couple of streets, and before we knew it, we were in the Gateway Arch National Park visitor center.
The museum is subterranean, the entrance a horseshoe-shaped facade carved into a slight hillside. We walked in, through a TSA-style checkpoint, including x-ray machines and metal detectors, and we quickly found ourselves in the museum. We ran through quickly to the check-in spot for our 11:05 tram ride. We lined up, we ushered into a small holding area where we were given a brief history of the arch, including a smattering of fun facts about it, then we were sent on to our tram car.
We shared the tram with a pair of friends that had gone to the Friday game that we were supposed to have gone to, and we talked baseball the entire ride up the leg of the arch.
I had seen videos of the cars on the tram and knew they were pretty tight. Sure enough, the car was tiny, with five seats crammed tightly in and the curve of the top causing an awkward posture for me as we climbed the 600 feet to the top of the monument.
When we reached the top, the group waiting for the cars for their descent from the top were piled up right outside our car’s door. Exchanging places with that group in such tight quarters was a challenge but we got it done. We climbed the last few stairs up to the top platform and soon, we found ourselves at 630 feet above the Mississippi River.
The views expand east across the river into Illinois, and west into St. Louis. “They” say you can see up to 30 miles away from the observation deck on a clear day. I’m terrible with distances so I can’t tell you if that was what we saw, but we did see pretty far away.
On the west side of the arch, we found ourselves looking straight down into Busch Stadium, where we would find ourselves a few hours later.
After the ten minutes we were allowed at the top, we were herded back into the stairwell to wait for our cars back down. We stood on the yellow squares on the steps while we waited for the cars to arrive and empty, then, once unoccupied, we climbed back in to the tiny pod. The ride back down was uneventful and quick. We disembarked and made our way to the cafe in the museum for a quick lunch before I made my way into the museum proper and took a slew of pictures and videos, which are, of course, found in my Photo Diary.
We made our way back to our securely parked vehicle and exited the parking garage, stopping at a couple more thrift stores before heading back to the AirBnB to check on Ash.
After making sure he was adequately fed, watered and walked, we left once more to head back to the parking garage.
Dodgers vs St Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium
Crossing the seventh stadium off my Stadium Chase (fifth as The Wandering New Mexican), we parked the car and made our way back down to the street level where we encountered a slew of fans lined up to get into the stadium. It was Masyn Winn bobblehead night where the first 15,000 fans into the stadium got a bobblehead of the Cardinals’ shortstop. With no desire to bring home a bobblehead of a competing player, we decided to duck into a bar in Ballpark Village across Clark Avenue from the stadium for a drink. I finished a beer and Brandy finished her cocktail and I noticed the line had gone down significantly. We rolled out and around the corner to Gate 3, right next to the Cards’ tribute statue of Stan “The Man” Musial.
As soon as we entered, we were each given a boxed bobblehead of Masyn Winn (yes, secretly, I was happy…) and as soon as we got past the attendants handing them out, we were approached by a guy who had a sack full of boxes of bobbleheads, he’d clearly been at this a while. He asked if either of us were given a gold one. I checked mine and no, I had the regular one.
Brandy, though, well, she had a gold one. The guy offered to buy it from her and she said no, just trade for a regular one. He happily obliged and we went on about our way.
We headed to the team store to pick up a hat to put on my hat wall and a baseball to add to my baseball wall, but the line was ridiculous so we put a pin in that task.
We stopped by a bar for a couple more drinks and made our way to our seats where we waited for the game to start.
With Roki Sasaki picking up the start, I didn’t have a lot of faith for a Dodgers win that night. Sure enough, while effective, he did work through a lot of trouble, ultimately surrendering three runs in the third. He did settle down after that though, finishing his night with 6 innings pitched, those three runs on five hits, striking out 4 and walking 2, far and away the most effective start of his 2026 thus far.
The Dodgers bats, on the other hand, we stymied. They only managed four hits through the first eight innings, not scoring any runs. Brandy, with ants in her pants, wanted to leave early (last game I will go to with her in tow) so we left before the start of the 8th inning. Later come to find out that the Dodgers managed to scratch a couple of runs across in their half of the 9th before their closer, Riley O’Brien, shut the door.
On our way back to the parking garage, we stopped by the Baseballism store in Ballpark Village and I finally snatched up one of their 6+4+3=2 shirts that I’ve been pining for for so long.
Even though we handed the guy right inside the gate $400, and the Dodgers lost, and we left early, it was still nice being able to say I visited my seventh MLB stadium, and fourth in two seasons (after LA, Kansas City and Denver last year) and will have another new one to add to the list later this season…
Pictures from our time at Busch Stadium are, as always, on the ol’ Photo Diary, make sure you check those out.
Conclusion
We got back to the AirBnB and crashed immediately. The next morning, I woke up, showered, and packed up before we hit the road at 8:15. We stopped at Starbucks for a lavender vanilla chai latte for Brandy and the wrong drink for me (I ordered a white chocolate mocha and got a drip coffee with extra cream and 2 Splenda…? Close, I suppose…) then a quick stop for gas then the next stop was at home. We didn’t even stop for a pee break in the 4+ hours it took us to get there.
All in all, it was a good time, though I did feel exceptionally rushed through the experiences I wanted to have, while taking our time at the thrift stores that Brandy wanted to stop at. It is a conversation I will have to have with her when I explain to her why I don’t want her to accompany me to places I want to go. I would LOVE her to join me, but not if it’s going to be a detriment to my experience.
Otherwise, once we got back, I mowed the lawn, took a gummy and blissed out for the rest of the night before returning to the daily grind Monday.
Stay tuned, we have a bunch more fantastic stuff coming up soon, you don’t want to miss it!
-Phil