Baltimore Trip

We decided to surprise Ashton and take him to Baltimore for the weekend to see an Orioles game. It worked in my favor because they were playing the Indians! We bought tickets to Sunday's day game, but we went up on Saturday morning. My parents met us near the campground that we were staying at and followed us up.  We didn't tell Ashton where we were going when we got in the car. We just told him that we had a surprise for him. Once we headed down the road, he started to see signs for Baltimore. He kept saying, oooohh... Baltimore!! I kept telling him, no we weren't going to Baltimore. But of course, the closer we got, the more and more he saw the signs. Well, right before you get into downtown, there is an exit for New York City, so I told him we were going there. As we exited the interstate, we pulled up right next to Raven's stadium. It took him a minute, but then realized we were in Baltimore! We drove by Camden Yards and he got so excited! He kept saying "Can we go to a game?" I just told him not today. Of course he was upset. We checked into our hotel, but the rooms weren't ready yet. At least we got to park our car and walk around. I actually had tickets to do a ballpark tour of Camden Yards at 12:30pm, so we made our way to the stadium. We went into one of the restaurants at the stadium and got something to drink before our tour since we had a little time. We met our tour guide at the front entrance and started our tour. We got to walk around the entire stadium. We made our way onto the field and got to sit in the Orioles dugout! Ashton loved it! We got to go underneath the stands where the players are usually at. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see any players. Then we made our way up to where the press boxes were! I was wishing that Tom Hamilton (the voice of the Indians) was there, but he wasn't. We got to see the control room and everything. It was definitely an amazing experience that I recommend to anyone.

After our tour, we went to grab something for lunch. We didn't have anymore plans for the day, so after lunch we headed back to the hotel. Our rooms were ready by the time we got back. We actually got adjoining rooms and Ashton loved it. He loved that he could go from room to room without going outside in the hall. Mom and Dad were going to go to the Casino for a little bit, so Kevin decided to take Ashton to the Saturday night game. We got tickets in the outfield behind center field. Around the 2nd inning, Ashton got to see his favorite player, Mark Trumbo, hit a homerun. The excitement in his eyes was something I will never forget. Two innings later, it started to rain, and it rained for about 10 minutes, but it was enough that they had to put the tarp on the field. So we went over to the bullpen area. There is a relief pitcher on the Indians team that is from VA so we wanted to say hi. Ashton kept calling for him and he eventually came out to say hi. Once the rain stopped, we went around and found a new seat since some people left. Ashton ended up seeing a Win for the Orioles.

Trumbo hit a HR

Kyle Crockett - Hometown VA boy

Sunday morning, we walked over to Dunkin Donuts and got some breakfast before the game. It was a hot one that day, but luckily we were in the shade! Around the 8th inning, I noticed behind the Orioles dugout, there have been empty seats for a while. So we decided to move down to those seats. First row, first seats, right behind the dugout. The game was tied going into the bottom of the 9th. The Orioles put in Reimold as a pinch hitter. Strike one, ball one, ball two, then Home Run. Orioles with the walk off win. Ashton got to see another win and what a way to see a win! He was so excited!!! As we were walking away to leave, someone on the field called for Ashton. Ashton walked down to where the dugout was and the guy threw him a baseball that was used during the game. So Ashton's first baseball games were definitely memorable. He got to see his favorite player hit a homerun, a rain delay, a walk off win and got a baseball!