Cooperstown Livin' the Dream!

Saturday June 1

Today we went to Cooperstown.  Our day started out on a bad note.  We found out on Friday night, rather later in the night, that we would have to be at Cooperstown at 8:00 rather than 9:45-10:00 in the morning.  Not good news.  So we had to get up and out of there, (Niagara) by  3:30 am.  Nothing fun for us.  I slept about 2 hours that nite because I woke up and then couldn’t get back to sleep anymore. 

So we got out and the attendant at the hotel was helping to put the luggage in the car and Jamie was out in back of the car with him and suddenly there was a big boom sound.  And all the lights in the area went out, as though a transformer had been hit.  So then Jamie saw a car with something being dragged by it and about 7 police cars following it in hot pursuit.  Good way to start out. 

Then we got in the car and because it was dark because of the power outage, it was hard to see and know where we were going in the dark.  We got a little lost because the GPS wasn’t working.  So then we finally got to the border and finished that part of it.  It was a bit nerving.  Because my GPS wasn’t functioning, we used Jamie’s on her phone.  And followed along to we realized that we were going west, instead of east.  Not a good plan….So we got off and through another toll booth and regrouped. We turned around, got back on the toll road and we were behind a Fedex truck and so Jamie moved to pass on the left side of it.  As we did the Fedex truck hit a deer and the deer literally skidded across the road in front of us.  We saw quite a lot of deer at the side of the road after that.  It is really hard to see them.  But it was really scary as it slid across the road.  It was odd how it did that, it was almost a little miracle that we didn’t “re-hit” that deer.  Anyway, after all this I said to Jamie, should I say a little prayer?  So I did, and after that we got on the right road and nothing else “exciting” happened after that.  So I guess we were just lucky at first, in a strange way.

We got to Cooperstown about 8:15 despite all the bad start.  It is a cool place and they are pretty organized and here are some pics:

This is the entry gate to Cooperstown. 

This is the road around the "campus"

 This is the family pavilion.  We ate a BBQ chicken lunch here on the first day of registration.  The lines were L O N G and took quite a while to get through.  There were lots of family members there.

Here is a closer view.

After we got through the gates, the cars had to wait to be assigned a route to the appropriate dorm room.  It took a while because there were so many people that had to register.

 

 

Here is where Tyson stayed with his team.  The only day we could go and hang out at his dorm, was the day that we registered him.  After that it was off-limits. Mostly for the safety of the kids, I would think.

There were lots of fields with open areas to practice in.

This is the Youth Hall of Fame board with pics of the teams that participated.

This is at the entry.  Very nice scenery.

This is the emblem which appears on most of the apparel and souvenirs, etc.

Here is a direction sign, so us family member don't get lost on campus!
That's all for tonight.  I hope to have more time tomorrow.  This is a delayed post because we had no Wifi.  More on that later!