I went home (USA) in October for vacation. In New Zealand they don't call it vacation, they call it 'holiday'.
Flight landed in L.A. and I rented a car from there. After a long drive and a wonderful visit with Dawn & family, I crossed into Wisconsin. At my usual Exit#1 gas stop, I took this picture. You can't really tell but the white SUV has an Illinois plate and a trailer hitch with a Green Bay Packer emblem :-)
Near Wisconsin Rapids, the kids wanted to get out and stretch at Nepco Lake County Park:
When we got home, there was a re-union with the Pink Bunny.
I didn't take many pictures of my vacation other than when I took dad to the Monday night NFL game (Green Bay Packers vs Chicago Bears) November 4th. I didn't get to see #12 play much as that is the night he broke his collar bone. We lost, but it was still a great game to see.
We got to the game quite early and got a really close parking spot ($30 to the Lions club (charity)).
It didn't take long to get into the stadium and Clay was waiting to greet us ;-)
Once we got up to the indoor suites, this was the view we had from our seats (an hour+ before game time).
I went down to the glass, looked back and took a couple of pictures of dad. It was theater seating so there wasn't any problem seeing everything and the seats were very comfortable, and it was heated indoor seating!!
This was the view while standing at the glass (no partition dividers when you are closer):
straight ahead:
look left.
look right.
From our seats, if we walked around to the end zone toward our left, we could go up one level and stand at an outside deck area. I went to the deck and took a few pics before the game. This one is looking out at the south end zone with the newly built levels.
more down at the bowl:
straight down from the deck:
and straight up from the deck at the north end zone big screen (just like south end zone but I was so close). If you look closely at the top of this picture, you can see it was 66:28 minutes to go before kick-off:
This is a look out at the parking lot from our level. This is still an hour+ before game time. The immediate (stadium) parking lot looks rather empty because those are reserved spots for season ticket holders. Season ticket holders don't have to rush to get parking ;-)
And I am back at my seat, next to dad. Here is a picture from our seats. You can see a few players on the field warming up:
These are the seats to my right, which surprisingly stayed empty the entire game. That was because if you look toward the top of the picture, the seat-holders spent the entire game watching from the atrium area. They were standing around some tall tables where they shared food and drink (they had to purchase the food/drink, we were not sitting in the suites w/ included food/drink, that's really expensive!).
Now let's get to the GAME !!!
Warm-ups:
Players being announced at Game-Time:
The National Anthem:
One of the early plays:
During commercial-break, the Tundra DrumLine at work (in the lower left corner of the field):
If you couldn't see it well enough, just look at the TV hanging above us to the right:
Although we could not see an end zone screen from our seats, we had a couple of TVs in the suite area to watch replays. There was a TV up front near the left of the suite:
Directly in front of us (to the right of that hanging TV) are 2 speakers (black boxes) through which they brought us the radio broadcast of the game, and looking a bit to the right is the other TV near the ceiling:
When it was over, the stadium quickly emptied:
Time to go home:
Although Moosie and LB stayed in the car during the game, they were exhausted when we got home.
