We woke up from a nice nights sleep at the HoJo in Flagstaff. I had an early morning oil change scheduled at the local Honda dealership and was eager to get it done with so we could go on with our day. The oil change revealed an oil leak issue. It would be just under $400 to fix the issue.
Once they started to fix the issue, they found it was a bigger issue, $1041 was the new estimate; awesome. The car has 270k miles on it so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that it may have a decent sized repair coming, and it was certainly leaking oil. The car needs to work for our trip as we have many more thousands of miles ahead of us just to get home from where we currently are. We okay’d the work, and they gave us a Honda CRV as a loaner, and we proceeded to drive 4 hours south to Phoenix for our next game.
The drive from Flagstaff to Phoenix is epicly beautiful, I mean really beautiful. You drop a few thousand feet in elevation, and we went from 50 degree weather to 80 degree weather. The landscape went from snow-capped mountains to cacti and desert.
We eventually arrived at our overnight hotel, the Drury Inn – Chandler. Keke and Soren opted out of this game as the ticket prices were a bit on the expensive side. Why were they pricier? Because the Yankees were in town.
Honestly, at the game, I don’t know if there were more Yankee our Diamondback fans in the stands. Regardless, we got to see C.C. Sabathia’s 3,000th strikeout (3rd lefty to accomplish in baseball history). Zack Grienke got the last laugh as he pitched lights out, and the Diamondbacks ultimately won. Beyond that, I was excited to see Eduardo Escobar play for the D-Backs. He was a favorite of mine while he played for the Twins, and he is having a great year in Arizona. He looks like he is having fun every time he plays, and it’s great seeing someone so locked into what they do. He didn’t disappoint this game as he went 3-4 with two doubles.
The stadium was cool; lots of fun areas, including a swimming pool. It has a retractable roof, and feels a bit cavernous, but the roof was open on this night, and we really enjoyed seeing a game there. The Yankees being in town certainly brought in an added energy. Our seats were upper right field line, but we ended up moving to upper deck behind home plate. We were higher up, but we could see everything.
We didn’t try the food; it all looked good and we couldn’t decide. We also got our fill at the Drury dinner buffet before we left.
The Draft Room had a selection of craft beers. We tried a local beer called Four Peaks. Their white ale was very good.
Keke had dropped us off, so she came back to pick us up. Stadium traffic delayed here quite a bit, but once she arrived, it was about 20 minutes back to the hotel. There are certainly closer places to stay if you’re going to a game in Arizona, but the Drury in Chandler was about $120 a night for four people with free parking. As mentioned in a previous post, Drury provides dinner and breakfast and three drinks for each adult; it ends up being a really good deal for a nice hotel when you factor in all you get. With another team to cross off our list, we were happy to head back and crash for the night.