Primed with young stars and proven vets, the D-backs are coiled for another World Series run in 2024. Follow them out of town this summer on one of these five fun-filled road trips.
Friday, August 16-Wednesday, August 21
See the Everglades – and “Florida Men” aplenty! – with a late-summer visit to the other Sunshine State.
Ybor City will gladden the hedonistic heart of any New Orleans or Nashville habitué. Famed as the historical town center of old Tampa, it’s a lively shopping-and-nightlife hub replete with the French Quarter-style double-gallery storefronts one seems to find in every New World town colonized by the French or Spanish, with broad balconies so ideal for people-watching and bead-tossing. Learn about the district’s origins as a 19th-century cigar hub at the Ybor City Museum (ybormuseum.org) before hopping on the 6-mile Gandy Bridge to nearby St. Petersburg for a weekend D-backs-Rays game at swoopy Tropicana Field (mlb.com/rays). Then, for heartier road-tripping souls, it’s off to Miami for an early-week game at LoanDepot Park (mlb.com/marlins), with its uniquely hideous “Marlinator” home run sculpture.
Tampa to Miami Road Trip
Drive time: 4.5 hours
1. Start your Tampa-area beaching with a bang at Clearwater Beach north of the stadium, with soft, white sand and mild gulf swells. visitstpeteclearwater.com
2. You can’t go to Florida and not commune with a manatee. It’s sea-cow central at Manatee Park in Fort Myers, where you can boat amongst them in a non-captive environment. leegov.com
3. It’s not hockey season, so most Florida panther-watching will have to include the genuine article. Find the fearsome indigenous felines at the Florida Panther Wildlife Refuge in Immokalee. fws.gov
4. Your transit takes you through the heart of the Everglades – that swampy part of the U.S. landmass that’s only a few global temperature clicks from being an ocean again. Fan-boat through it at Everglades Safari Park. evergladessafaripark.com
5. Bookend your Florida baseball jaunt with another day of white-sand beaching at Crandon Park Beach, named the city’s best spot for turquoise waters by Travel + Leisure. miamidade.gov/parks
Where to Stay
Hotel Haya
Located in the heart of Ybor City, this irresistible boutique hotel marries the historical (it’s a converted 19th-century cigar factory) with the modern (spacious rooms, big balconies, smoked cocktails at on-site restaurant Flor Fina). hotelhaya.com
What to Eat
Columbia Restaurant
Billed as “the oldest restaurant in Florida,” this Spanish-Cuban hot spot is a true landmark, with a sprawling, homey menu of savory empanadas, fragrant seafood casseroles and slow-cooked beef and pork dishes to do the event-dining premise justice. Epic sangria, too. columbiarestaurant.com
Road-Trip Add-On
Hemingway Home & Museum
Have the fortitude for a side trip to the Florida Keys? Visit Papa’s former stomping grounds, located on the remotest tip of Florida. hemingwayhome.com
Tuesday, July 2-Sunday, July 7
You’ll be California dreamin’ of NL West dominance with this Independence Day-straddling SoCal sojourn.
As the home of Dodger Stadium, Chavez Ravine is a swell place to see a baseball game, but can you actually stay there? Unless you’ve Airbnb-ed a pet crate on L.A.’s nearby Skid Row, you don’t have many options. We say book a room in one of L.A.’s storied South Bay beach towns – essentially, Redondo, Manhattan or Hermosa (see Where to Stay) – and take the Dodger Stadium Express (metro.net/riding/dodger-stadium-express) to the game. It’s an every-half-hour Metro bus line that goes directly to the stadium from the nearby Harbor Gateway Transit Center and back again after the game. This way, you get your beach-time and a “real L.A. experience” that doesn’t involve pounding on your steering wheel in gridlock. And when you’re done with the Dodgers, follow the D-backs down south on the I-5 to famously scenic Petco Park (mlb.com/padres) – with an amusing side trip or two along the way.
L.A. to San Diego Road Trip
Drive time: 2.5 hours
1. Disneyland, shmisneyland. If you grew up in SoCal, Knott’s Berry Farm was your jam. And now it boasts a new and improved Knott’s Hotel for overnighters. knotts.com
2. Perched just north of the L.A.-Orange County line, Seal Beach is a stealth destination for sun-and-fun fans in the know. Less skinhead-y than Huntington; way cleaner than Santa Monica. sealbeachca.gov
3. More than 50 wineries reside in the Temecula Valley about 20 miles inland where Riverside and San Diego counties meet. It’s SoCal’s premier wine region – and it has some swell breweries, too. visittemeculavalley.com
4. Care for a Padres apéritif? Catch a Lake Elsinore Storm Minor League baseball game en route to the parent club – and see who the D-backs will be beating in the future. milb.com/lake-elsinore
5. Behold the mechanical enormity of the USS Midway Museum in San Diego, a decommissioned U.S. aircraft carrier dating to World War II. It’s 70,000 tons of family fun. midway.org
What to Eat
Caesar’s Restaurant & Bar
Granted, eating a salad isn’t the typical reason people skip across the border for Tijuana day trips, but this is the Caesar salad we’re talking about – and enjoying its refreshing, salty funkiness in the restaurant where an enterprising Italian first served it is surely a religious experience. grupoplascencia.com/caesars
Where to Stay
Shade Hotel Redondo Beach
Cripplingly pretty sunset beach views are certainly to be had at this boutique hotel in the laid-back South Bay surfer town of Redondo Beach. Amenities include a bay-side aqua-deck overlooking the Pacific, complimentary sky-blue beach cruisers and more to get you into the sun-bum mood. rb.shadehotel.com
Tuesday, June 18-Sunday, June 23
Geek out on U.S. history while following the D-backs up the Atlantic seaboard.
Our nation’s capital suffers no shortage of old, historically important buildings, but Nationals Park (mlb.com/nationals) is not one of them – built along the Anacostia River near the U.S. Navy Yard, the single-purpose stadium debuted in 2008, replacing cavernous RFK Stadium, where the Nationals played for their first three years of existence. After your weekday game in D.C., and obligatory visits to the Smithsonian (si.edu), White House (whitehouse.gov) and Lincoln Memorial (nps.gov), steer your wagon train north to the City of Brotherly Love and its incomparable selection of cracked monuments and cheesy beefsteak sandwiches, culminating in a Phillies-D-backs game at Citizens Bank Park (mlb.com/phillies). En route, bone up on your battlefields.
Washington, D.C. to Philadelphia Road Trip
Drive time: 2.5 hours
1. Throw a change-up into your MLB road trip with the homespun nostalgia of a minor league game with the Bowie Baysox, the AA affiliate of the Baltimore Orioles. milb.com/bowie
2. In Baltimore, stop for lunch at Bunny’s Buckets and Bubbles, a novel fried chicken and Champagne concept from Top Chef alum Jesse Sandlin. Named a Best Restaurant of 2024 by Baltimore magazine. bunnysbaltimore.com
3. In Philadelphia, spend an hour or two ruminating on America’s original renaissance man at the highly interactive Benjamin Franklin Museum. What, you thought we meant Rocky? nps.gov
What to Eat
Geno’s Steaks vs. Pat’s King of Steaks
Multiple sandwich shops in the city lay claim to the “best” Philly cheesesteak, but the rivalry between this pair of old-timers is special. Conveniently, they’re located across Passyunk Avenue from one another, meaning your group can order sandwiches from both shops and decide for yourselves which Cheez Whiz-slathered masterpiece reigns supreme. genosteaks.com, patskingofsteaks.com
Ball Park Food Extra!
A favorite of the Philly and South Jersey set, disco fries have a featured role at Phillies games: potatoes buried in pork, provolone and peppers. Wicked. mlb.com/phillies
Road-Trip Add-On
National Civil War Museum
Though it includes no actual battlefields – for one of those, visit the Gettysburg Museum of History about 40 miles south – this nonprofit bills itself as the “only museum that portrays the entire story of the American Civil War,” from the plight of its soldiers to the events of key battles like Bull Run, Chancellorsville and the tide-turning clash at Gettysburg. nationalcivilwarmuseum.com
Friday, August 2-Wednesday, August 7
Two resurgent Rust Belt cities with gorgeous stadiums make for a primo baseball pilgrimage.
For discerning fans, the Pittsburgh-Cleveland nexus is hard to beat for a compact, three-day baseball bender. Start with a weekend D-backs-Pirates game at glorious PNC Park (mlb.com/pirates, pictured below). Opened in 2001, the stadium has a uniquely sunken, patio-like design, with in-your-face downtown views behind the unenclosed outfield that lend the illusion of the Pittsburgh skyline itself completing the stadium wall. After getting your fill of Pittsburgh’s ennobling river views, beeline northwest to the land of Randy Newman and LeBron James. Staked out on the shores of Lake Erie, Cleveland achieves special animation in the summer, when crisp blue skies meet steely waters in one of the cleanest horizons you’ll ever lay eyes on. Just as striking: Progressive Field (mlb.com/guardians), home of the Guardians, which is impressive in the exact opposite manner of PNC Park, with towering grandstands that seem to dwarf the city around it.
Pittsburgh to Cleveland
Drive time: 2.1 hours
1. Before leaving the Steel City, spend a few minutes strolling Point State Park, where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers meet to form the mighty Ohio River – thus giving the area its Three Rivers nickname. pittsburghpa.gov
2. The Guardians’ AA minor league baseball team, the Akron Rubber Ducks, conveniently play not 30 minutes away from the mothership. A fun add-on. milb.com/akron
3. Like a bit of salad with your cheese? Be sure to make a pit stop at Luigi’s in Akron, a family restaurant famed for pairing a mountain of whole-milk mozzarella with a little lettuce, black olives and sliced radishes. luigisrestaurant.com
4. Walk off all that cheese at the Cleveland Lakefront Nature Preserve, featuring miles of winding trails through one of the richest bird habitats in the U.S. ohiodnr.gov
Where to Stay
Priory Hotel
Set in a 19th-century Benedictine monastery, this downtown Pittsburgh hotel is about as far atmospherically from a Courtyard by Marriott as you can get. Set in the city’s Deutschtown district, the European-style hotel is also within walking distance of PNC Park, The Andy Warhol Museum and Heinz Field. Predictably, its on-site pub, The Monk’s Bar, has a good selection of Trappist ales. thepriory.com
Road-Trip Add-On
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
No trip to Comeback City would be conscionable without a visit to the mecca of rock. Sure, you’ll find impressive memorabilia – including John Cougar Mellencamp’s motorcycle, Elvis Presley’s Comeback Special suit and the first issue of Rolling Stone – but this is no glorified Hard Rock Café. For students of the form, it’s Smithsonian-level. rockhall.com
Friday, July 19-Wednesday, July 24
Transplanted Midwesterners and super-hearty road-trippers, this one’s for you.
Though separated by 500 miles, Chicago and Kansas City share a certain Midwestern kinship. Both sprang to life as meat-packing capitals. Both were common terminus points during the Great Migration of the early century, with rich legacies of African-American culture to show for it. Both were “wide open” economies where organized crime thrived. And both, of course, are great baseball towns. Start with a weekend road series against the Cubs at legendary Wrigley Field (mlb.com/cubs, pictured below), then pile in your rental car – or railcar (see below) – for the loooooong drive to Kansas City and a mid-week series against the Royals at breezy Kauffman Stadium (mlb.com/royals), with its signature faux crown billboard. While In KC, be sure to visit the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (nlbm.com) – aside from Cooperstown, the most irreplaceable trove of baseball history in the U.S., with exhibits spanning the league’s creation in 1920 to Jackie Robinson’s MLB debut in 1947.
Chicago to Kansas City
Drive time: 8 hours
1. Take the I-80 though Iowa to get to Kansas City, because Iowa is absolutely lousy with minor league baseball teams, including the AAA Iowa Cubs in Des Moines. milb.com/iowa
2. The bridges of Madison County are a real thing, not just a wistful Clint Eastwood movie, dontcha know. Find the quaint American artifacts south of Des Moines. madisoncounty.com
3. Country Club Plaza in Kansas City is an Arabesque trip. Built in the 1920s, the Spanish Revival retail hub features 15 blocks of minaret-style bell towers, decorative ironwork, colorful ceramic tiles and, yes, an Apple Store. You can also score some very nice brisket at high-end barbecue joint Jack Stack (jackstackbbq.com) to cap the end of your drive. countryclubplaza.com
Jazz Extra!
Want to feel acute culture envy? Visit one of KC’s roughly four dozen jazz lounges – including Green Lady Lounge (greenladylounge.com) just steps from the Hotel Indigo (see below), where the warm sounds of a live combo fill the long, narrow space like Lauren Bacall in a cigarette dress, and the Vieux Carrés taste like nectar. Visit livejazzkc.com/venues for a full list of KC jazz clubs.
Train Option!
Not relishing that 8-hour drive from CHI to KC? Take Amtrak’s famed Southwest Chief instead. The venerable choo-choo will get you doorstep-to-doorstep in about 7 hours. Unlike you, it never stops for bathroom breaks. amtrak.com/southwest-chief-train
Where to Stay
Hotel Indigo Kansas City – the Crossroads
For affordable boutique stylishness, you’d be pressed to do better than this downtown-adjacent hotel, with its gallery-like displays of paintings from local artists and spotless, modern rooms. Mosey on down to the hotel’s New American gastropub, Jim Leedy Bar & Kitchen, then hit the nearby nightlife district for jazz and cocktails. ihg.com/hotelindigo
