Today we visited Miller Park in Milwaukee. What an awesome venue!

For starters, the building is just massive. On the approach, you can see the stadium from about a mile or two off I-94 and it looks amazing. The retractable roof gives the stadium a unique look that’s really cool. Tonight’s forecast called for a chance of rain, so they closed the roof about a half hour before game time.

There’s a ton of parking around the stadium, providing a tailgating atmosphere that you don’t find at a lot of MLB games. We walked up the smell of meat on the grill and the sounds of kids throwing ball in the parking lot. It was also Little League night at the park, so we saw a lot of little MLB hopefuls in their jerseys tonight.

I’ve never seen a stadium that catered more to the kid experience. In addition to the action on the field, the concourse was full of play areas for the kids. Up on our level, there was a full-on playground like you see at fast food restaurants with lots of little tykes running and climbing while their parents watched the game on the monitors. On the lower concourse, we came up on a host of free activities that kept us enrapt right up till game time: a baserunning drill that times the kids from home to first; a batting cage; a slide; and a pitching radar gun activity. Best of all…they were all FREE. Definitely a great way to enjoy the time before the first pitch.

As for the food, the hot dogs were amazing, maybe the best one I’ve had on our tour. To top it off, we got a free Coke with our parking pass. Pretty cool!

With tonight’s visit, I’m up to 21 current stadiums visited. When we first got married, Sunny and I decided that we wanted to try and visit all 30 major league parks. We hit it hard for the first 5 years or so, but having kids slowed us down considerably. But I’m glad we’re back in the saddle and this vacation has been such fun as we’ve shared this journey now with our children.

Closing the roof at Miller Park in Milwaukee