NY Trip: Thursday, August 7

I know – you’re thinking this is taking forever.  Me too.

Thursday was an improvised day, although we expected it a bit.  Todd and I had discussed right after the All-Star game that if we didn’t get Yankee Stadium tour tickets on the orginally scheduled day, we’d go back another day.  And it actually worked out really well.

Two days earlier, there was a fantasy baseball camp going on, so we wouldn’t have been able to have the full tour.  And also there were a limited amout of tours that day.  So thinking there were only two tours (a noon one and 1pm one), Todd, Emily and I got up early and made it to the box office well before it opened.  We ended up being 15th in line.

The line got to be very long and we were feeling bad for a lot of the people behind us, especially those with kids.  We had even considered buying a couple of extra tickets to hold on to for those familys.  But when the box office opened at 8:45, we were told that there were tours every hour that day.   We were relieved and got 9am tickets.  So that altered our day, too because we were wondering what we were going to do until 12.  Now we walked right into the stadium.

Man, that got exciting.  Todd even said he felt faint.  We first walked up to the press box.  There were several rows of benches that had a great view of the field.  And by the way, we had a great tour guide and you could tell he really loved his job.

After the press box, we walked out to left field and down into Monument Park.  This is a little shrine behind the outfield wall dedicated to the retired Yankee uniform numbers as well as plaques to some of the great players that wore Yankee uniforms.

Monument Park is already so close to the field and the gates were open so you could see everything, but the security guards were closely watching everyone – there was no sneaking out.  But after everyone got a good look at the monuments and got all their questions answered, it was time to go down to the dugout – on the field!

Oh yea, we walked along the warning track all the way to the dugout.  It was awesome.

We walked past the visitor’s dugout and before you knew it, we were sitting on the same bench that so many Yankee greats have sat on: DiMaggio, Berra, Mantle, the Babe, Gehrig, Jackson, Mattingly, Jeter, A-Rod.  It was intense.

(so intense, I guess I couldn’t smile)

Todd and I had fun pretending to be managers along the railing.

From the dugout we walked into the clubhouse, where picture taking was not allowed (although you could do an image search for one)

There was a roped off section we could stand in to view the lockers – I couldn’t get close enough to leave my note in Mariano’s locker (it said that even though he’s like 90, the Cubs would still love to have him.)

We left the locker room and back out into the dugout briefly (hey, empty bench!  Todd – sit down!)

Then we headed out of the stadium (and into the Yankee store, of course).

Well, now we realized we had a lot more time on our hands than we thought we would that day.  It was about 10:30.  Everyone else had gone to the beach, so we decided we’d go catch up with them.

But first, Emily wanted to stop at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park to get a close up look at the giant globe.  Unfortunately, there was a Mets game starting, so getting to the park took a lot longer than we anticipated.  Eventually we made it and got to take some fun pictures.

It’s too bad the fountains weren’t on, but then Emily wouldn’t have been able to get underneath it.

After stopping home to change, we finally got to the beach.  I think it was around 2pm by then.  Kate and Sara, along with Alex were starting to think about leaving shortly, so we hung out a little while with them, eating some lunch in the sand.  Unfortunately, the water left something to be desired.  There were no waves – it was flatter than Lake Michigan.  And there were a ton of jellyfish floating around.

Still, I would have gone for a swim if it weren’t for the lightening that was detected in the distance and the lifeguards ordered everyone out of the water.  Oh well.

Sara, Kate and Alex left for home and the rest of us stayed to walk the boardwalk a little bit.  A little bit turned into a longer bit and we eventually made our way all the way out to the Fire Island Lighthouse.

Once there, we decided to go up to the top, which provided awesome views of the bay, Fire Island, and the ocean.

I hit my head on one of those guy-wires pretty hard and left a bruise right above my eye.  That was fun.  I really enjoyed the climb (all 192 steps up metal-grate stairs – so it’s not for everyone) and the view.  Of course, back on the ground, we can’t go a day without taking ridiculous pictures.

I can’t remember what we did for dinner, but we did just kick back and relax the rest of the evening.  We were resting up in preparation for the following day.

More photos are here.