The Beginning of the End: The Journey Back

With the journey out to Cape Cod lasting four weeks, the rest on the Cape gave us the energy to begin our sprint back home.  We have one week to make it back to California from the Cape while hitting up the final two baseball games of the trip (Chicago Cubs and Denver Rockies).  We wake up early because also on our drive home, we want to hit up Cooperstown, the baseball hall of fame, which is located in upstate New York.  So we head begin our journey early Monday morning.

Outside of the Hall of Fame. 

After driving all morning long, we reached the small town of Cooperstown, NY in the early afternoon.  If there ever were a town that ran on baseball, this would be it.  The town has one main street lined with little shops and restaurants, and every window is decorated with baseball memorabilia of players past and present.  At the end of the street stands the Baseball Hall of Fame, which is right across the street from the local post office.  While many may ask why baseball honors its legends in this tiny town in upstate New York (we definitely did), we found out that it's because Abner Doubleday is rumored to have created the game of baseball in this city.

The museum is filled with exhibits dedicated to the history of the game, the impact of different countries on the game, and the stadiums found within baseball, which we found especially interesting.  We also found the portion of the museum that lists all the leaders in different statistical categories intriguing.  It was cool to see which records have lasted, and which haven’t survived the test of time/steroids.  We really liked seeing Barry Bonds' record-breaking homerun ball sitting in the Hall with an asterisk marked right in the center of it.  Once we finished looking at the history of the game, we entered the portion of the Hall where we found plaques dedicated to the greatest in the game. 

Looking at the dedication plaques.

After walking around the museum, we sat back down in the car and continued our drive back to California by heading north to Buffalo.  I don’t know if the hours in the car went by quickly because of the baseball games we were listening to on the car, or our excitement for Buffalo wings, but either way we made great time to Buffalo.  We pulled into Duff’s, which is one of the best wing stops in the town (even the President has stopped by).  The wings lived up to their reputation and we left the restaurant with our stomachs full and satisfied.  We ended our day at a local motel, ready to pass out from our food coma.

The Duff's Menu.