Day two resulted in a loss for the Padres, which was sad. Before the game we had a big hotel breakfast at the Courtyard by Marriott so we decided to work it off by heading over to Sam Houston park. Nothing much there, a couple of historic buildings and a pond with some ugly ducks. I didn't take any pictures, but my brother did, maybe he'll be nice enough to put some up here. That park turned into Buffalo Bayou park, which follows a sort of river/creek muddy water thing. We walked on that for a long time. I kept thinking it would head back to the city streets, but it went into this canyon and we realized that we going to have to retrace our steps to get back to some sidewalks and make it to the game. We tried to save some time by using their underground tunnel system to bypass crosswalks, but we got lost when it turned into a parking garage wth some very bad signage. I got a blister on foot from having to double-time it to the ballpark, but it was good excerise. We missed the first half of the inning, but saw the Astros rally in the bottom of the 1st, including a Tejada homerun. On to the pictures.

Mother's Day, so Junction Jack had his mother with him

Eckstein gets hit right after I decided I need to take some photos

Gratuitous butt smack.

Headley's Home Run. I can't tell if I just missed the ball or if that's it streaking by near the center of the shot. Judging by the marks on the ground in my other shots, I think it's the ball. Which is freaking awesome!

Hairston's double. Ball in shot again. But, a much smaller streak this time.

I've got some other shot's like this with Kouz struggling and Hundley fouling some stuff off, but I'm going to move on to the dance squad. I didn't catch what they were called, but they came out during the seventh inning stretch and waved their hands in the air while that was playing. After that, they play a song and do a choreographed simple dance to "Deep in the Heart of Texas" (or at least that's what gets repeated in the chrous).

Pretty amusing. That's all I've got. Like I said, maybe my brother will add some from our stroll through the parks. He's also got a shot of the outside of the park too. That reminds me, I wanted to share my thoughts on the park. Like I've said, I've been to about 2/3 of all the active parks (plus 4 parks that are no longer used) and one of the things I liked about the Houston park is that it's a good place to see a baseball game. It's cozy and it seems to me like there are a lot of good seats. As you might be able to tell by my pictures, we were sitting in the top section, but it felt like you were right on top of the action. The only other stadiums I've been to where I've felt that way are Petco and Dodger Stadium. Everything else about the stadium is so-so. The food is so-so. There is no place to take your kids if they are getting squirmy (I felt sorry for some of the moms there on Mother's Day trying to manage their toddlers). The site lines of downtown are minimal. The restaraunt -- named the 5-7 Grille after the retired numbers of Bagwell and Biggio -- looked okay, but the line was too long to give it a try and the loft there had a pool table, a wii and some Houston fans that were into taunting Padre fans. It was good, not great, unless all you want to is watch a baseball game (which counts for a lot in my book)., then it's very good.