The timeliness of these daily prompts never ceases to amaze me, as I’ve been actively planning a road trip for this summer. I’m hoping to do an East Coast baseball road trip near the end of July. My intention is to go see games in Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and Baltimore. But I’m also preparing myself for the reality that I may have to scale back to just D.C. and Baltimore for financial reasons.
Securing the Main Attraction
In this case, since the trip is so heavily baseball-themed, the first thing to take into consideration is getting tickets for the games themselves. I actually had to consult with Google Gemini to look at the 2026 schedules for the Philadelphia Phillies, Baltimore Orioles, and Washington Nationals just to see if there was a window where I could catch each of those three teams playing at home over the span of three consecutive days.
Even if this wasn’t a baseball trip—even if it were a trip to, say, Disney World—I would still begin the planning process by securing the main attraction tickets first. Then, I logically work my way outward from there.
Mapping Out the Lodging
The next step is making arrangements for lodging. Now that I know where I’m going and what days I plan on being there, I can plan my accommodations accordingly. In my case, I’m pretty fortunate because Baltimore and Washington D.C. are roughly thirty minutes apart. I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to stay directly in Baltimore, the D.C. area, or try to find something halfway between both places. I’m guessing Baltimore will probably be a little less expensive to crash in, but we’ll see what the rates look like.
Once the schedule and lodging are locked down, I figure out exactly how I’m going to get there. For this upcoming trip, airline tickets are completely out of the question; they are just way too expensive. Global events have made gas prices higher than ever, and airline ticket forces have gone up to match. It’s going to be a highway drive.
The Lowly Budget Priority
With the schedule, accommodations, and transportation figured out, the very last thing I worry about is actual spending money. This isn’t because I’m some master planner. Okay, fine, I’m actually a lousy planner. But on the hierarchy of priorities, spending cash is the least of my worries.
When I go to ballparks, I love to get souvenirs, but I don’t go crazy. I usually limit myself to a team logo ball or a baseball that features that specific stadium. If I see a stadium patch, I might pick one up, though I haven’t really started a collection of those yet. For me, the biggest thing is the experience: taking photos of the architecture, getting shots of myself—or Kid 2 when he’s with me—inside the park, and just taking in as much of the building as I can.
This year’s trip will be a fascinating return, because I actually visited Camden Yards in Baltimore twenty-five years ago. In fact, I toured the stadium the day of Game 7 of the 2001 World Series. But teams make massive changes to their ballparks from year to year, and a lot has shifted in Baltimore over the last quarter-century.
Pulling the Trigger on a Teacher’s Salary
By far the most frustrating aspect of this I-95 road trip is that I wrote another blog entry about it exactly one month ago today—and since then, I’ve done absolutely nothing to actually plan it. I haven’t committed a single dime to it yet. The reality is that a few unexpected financial obligations arose that I wasn’t prepared for, so the trip had to be put on the back burner temporarily. But I’m hoping that with my next paycheck at the end of the month, I can finally go ahead and secure tickets for at least one, if not two or all three, of the games.
Of course, doing this on a teacher’s salary means I’m not able to just plop down a couple thousand dollars on a whim and book a whole vacation in twenty minutes on my phone. I have to strategize. But I think the blueprint I’ve laid out here will be effective, even given the abbreviated budgeting and planning window I’ve set myself up with.
Go Deeper: This road trip blueprint isn’t just about baseball—it’s about survival. Check out my companion post, Fighting Ghosts: Caregiving, Anger, and Independence (live at 10 AM), where I open up about the heavy family shifts and hard boundaries pushing me toward the open road this summer.
Rebuilding a life takes grit, consistency, and a lot of ‘Option C’ thinking. Whether I’m closing in on 1,000 consecutive days of blogging or reflecting on the decade of work that brought me here, the mission remains the same: No glitz. Just the work. New to the blog? Start your journey here to see the blueprint and the ‘Tricorder’ perspective behind the rebuild.
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The article “Trigger Locked: Blueprints, Ballparks, and the Open Road” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob.
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