Day 4 – June 12 – Denver, Colorado

Wow is all I can say. What a drive. It is over 1000 miles from Los Angeles to Denver. First off, lets wrap up the Dodger Stadium experience. We really didn’t want to overindulge at the game, so we just feasted on regular ballpark food. We didn't budget a 4 hour game into this trip, especially with this long trip ahead of us. But that is what we got. With the long game and big crowd it was a challenge making it out of the park and off toward the freeway. Once we left Los Angeles, Steven was driving and we headed east on I-10 to Ontario (the city, not the province, although we will get to the province later in this trip) and on to I-15 toward Las Vegas. Steven thought a bit about diverting slightly to California Speedway in Fontana to lay down a couple of laps around the 2 mile NASCAR track, but with time being of the essence we stayed on the appropriate interstate highways on the way to Las Vegas & then on to Denver. We got to Las Vegas around 3:30 AM and found a spot to gas up and take a quick trip down the Strip so Shawn could see it for the first time. We had planned on stopping to get something to eat but we were too far behind schedule to do that and planned to grab a quick bite when we made our next gas stop. When we left Las Vegas we let Shawn get behind the wheel for the first time in this trip. He’s only had his drivers license for a couple of months so we wanted to limit the amount of driving he will do on the trip and keep him away from the congested parts of the trip. He was behind the wheel for almost 2 hours until we hit St. George, Utah. That portion of the trip included a small area in northwest Arizona in addition to the Nevada and Utah portions. I took over in St. George and we continued on I-15 until we ran into the start of I-70. When it was time to gas up I handed the keys over to brother Pat who drove us the rest of the way into Denver. He took the exit off of I-70 onto southbound I-25 and a short distance later we hit 2001 Blake Street, home of Coors Field. We then drove up the street about 5 more blocks to our hotel for the night, the Ritz Carlton. We got checked in, checked out the digs, and posted this blog entry. Now its time to take the short walk to Coors Field for tonight’s game with Denver taking on the Oakland A’s. There doesn’t appear to be any promotions tonight. Bummer.