I am sitting in the passenger’s seat of the family car. My dad’s at the wheel, there’s a Kirby Puckett Minnesota Twins jersey draped right in the middle of the back seat and there’s a straight line of grey highway surrounded by green and spotless blue ahead.

It all leads to one place, my personal favorite of summer traditions: the Mueller boys’ annual baseball trip.

For about 13 years now, my father and I have set a route, packed up our stuff, and hit the open road – or the open air, in a few cases – in a quest to see the country, watch some good baseball and, in the case of this year and so many others before, escape some pretty bad baseball here at home. I look forward to these trips every year – we’ve only skipped one year due to reasons of me spending much of the summer on a high school tour of Europe – for the baseball, the sightseeing and, of course, the bonding with my dad, chatting and thinking about the world together. We also giggle about farts a lot.

This year’s trip takes us relatively close to Minneapolis to see the somehow playoff-contending Twins (I was amazed that I could name a current player … and even more so when that player was 40-year-old Torii Hunter).

We’ve been doing this for well over a decade now, hitting parks both major and minor. We’ve run into everyone and everything, from a man in West Virginia who brought a toaster to his seat to make toast celebrating each opponent strike out to Robert Pattinson in Los Angeles. I’ve played between-inning games involving digging for a penny in pantyhose, singing for a Kit-Kat bar and answering a simple question about Batavia Muckdog history – which I ACED (after the emcee secretly told me the answer). I’ve puked my shoes out in the concourse of Great American Ballpark – sorry, Cincy – and rallied in time to see the Geoff Jenkins era Brewers take on the Reds.

That’s just the tip of our adventures, and if you’re a baseball nut with a fellow fan in the family, there’s no reason you can’t have some similar bizarre but beloved memories of your own. So here are eight little tips for crafting a baseball trip – and hopefully a treasured tradition – of your own.

Don’t do all 30 stadiums in one trip

I get it; the idea of doing all 30 major league stadiums in one big triumphant trip sounds legendary as hell. But logistically – and just personally – it seems like a nightmare. You could try to be lesisurely with the trip, but really, who has the time – and, probably most pressingly, the money – to take basically an entire summer off?

The other popular option, then, is the 30-in-30 route, trying to hit every stadium within about a month. However, that route requires soul-draining and stressful amounts of driving day after day after day, racing to get to the games on time or skipping out on the end of one in order to get back on the road. Our first year, we ran into another father-son baseball trip in Chicago who was doing this, and just hearing them explain their plan was exhausting. Arrive at the game. Leave in the eighth. Drive all night. Arrive just in time for a new game. Leave that one early. Speed to the next place. Probably sleep at some point. Maybe see a monument from the car window.

I don’t begrudge anyone who wants to do this kind of trip; I totally get the appeal – it’s a genuinely impressive feat – and those who pull it off deserve an actual trophy from, I don’t know, somebody. But the best memories I have of our trips tend to come from the detours, from seeing or tasting each city’s famous gems and just the relaxed nights mocking SportsCenter’s Tebow coverage. And if you want to see 30 stadiums in a compressed period, the time for that just isn’t there. You’ll have traveled the country and seen a game in every stadium, but at the end, what will you have really seen?

Instead of binging on baseball and asphalt, I recommend biting off the nation’s supply of baseball one little chunk at a time. Maybe dig into the Washington D.C. and Baltimore area for a week one summer; maybe St. Louis and Kansas City for a week the following year. You can still see a game every night while getting to see and taste the culture of another city. And sleep in a bed and everything.

Add in some minor league teams

There are only 30 major league baseball teams, but add in the about 142 minor league teams scattered across the U.S. (not including Mexican League and Rookie League teams) and there’s tons more baseball to tap into – and cities to check out and open up your map of possible destinations. Most of them are cheaper than major league games, and they each have their own unique offerings, whether you’re in a big city seeing the Las Vegas 51s or the New Orleans Zephyrs or a tiny city seeing a team with a biscuit for a mascot.

Big or small, though, every minor league park we’ve been to has a particular homey charm that a major league game can’t offer. Don’t be scared by the minor league tag either; it’s still good, entertaining and competitive baseball with fans that often act like they personally know the whole lineup. Plus, you never know when you might see a future All-Star, like we did when we saw a young Ryan Braun hitting game-winning home runs for the then West Virginia Power.

Choose a hub hotel

Even if you’re scaling your trip down from 30 pro stadiums to maybe one pro team and a few minor league teams, you’ll probably have to drive a bit. Early on our trips, we drove from Milwaukee to Detroit to Cincinnati to Pittsburgh to Cleveland and finally back home. Another trip took us from Detroit all the way down to Nashville with several minor league stops along the way. The trips were still a blast, of course, but all of the driving took a toll and became exhausting. By the end of that second 10-day trip, we were ready sleep in our own beds again.

The strategy we’ve seen work out is instead of a lot of driving, find a central hub hotel or two around the middle of several teams. If you go to Cincinnati, for instance, you can stay at one hotel and just shortly jump to games in Louisville, Lexington and obviously Cincy. The same goes for Los Angeles, where not only do you have the Angels and Dodgers in town but three or four minor league stadiums close by. Some routes and areas may not allow for one hub hotel location – Texas, for instance, is way too sprawled out to fit in multiple teams with a single hotel spot – but if you can find a way to keep your number of hotels to one or two, you’ll have less time behind the wheel and more time exploring.

Learn to score

Scoring baseball games is a lost practice, but it’s silly easy to learn – you can get really detailed and technical with your approach or just keep track of what you want – and it gives you a nice cheap souvenir to help you remember who you got to see and what craziness may have happened. Like, say, a ten-run comeback by the home team – which happened on a trip in Buffalo to see the Triple-A Bisons. I have the childishly scribbled scorecard to prove it. 

Get a hotel with free Wi-fi/parking/breakfast

The benefits of this tip seem pretty self-explanatory, but these extra hotel benefits can save you a lot of time, hassle and money during the run of a baseball trip.

Get to the games early

This is another pretty self-explanatory one, but each park and stadium has it’s own little fun shops and quirks to check out. The Rays’ stadium in Tampa Bay has actual live rays you can pet. I’ve recently discovered the Twins’ Target Field has a stand that sells walleye on a stick (I’d judge, but considering State Fair is happening right now, I don’t think I can). Once again, whether it’s another city or another stadium, you want to actually explore, learn and experience stuff on these trips, not just ingest.

Plus, if you get there before the gates open, you can play catch until you realize you both aren’t particularly good at baseball and your arm starts to hurt.

Make sure the places you're going to are, you know, open

I know: duh! But the following is a true story. For our first trip, my dad and I set aside four days in Cincinnati, not only for baseball but for hitting up roller coasters at King’s Island close by. So on day one, we arrived in town, dropped off our bags at our hotel room and scurried off to King’s Island … only to discover the theme park was closed due to school starting (which what the hell?). Our trip had turned into a cheap knock-off of "National Lampoon’s Vacation," and the profanity-laden ride back to the hotel could’ve made a Tarantino movie concerned for the children.

Bottom line: Check to make sure the places you want to visit are actually open before you become the Griswolds. And in the case you forget and get Wally World-ed …

Prepare to improv

This bares teaching for trips of all varieties – and yes , it’s trite as hell – but the best memories come from the unplanned stuff. Instead of doing King’s Island, for instance, we watched baseball, explored the city, found a nifty center with a movie theater for rainy days, and spent one lazy evening eating White Castles – the first time for me – and watching the "Dawn of the Dead" remake _ the first time for him. It sounds dumb and silly – because it was dumb and silly – but it’s one of my greatest memories of our trips, and of my father period.

Hopefully some of these tips help you make the most of your baseball trip. But really, the ultimate tip is that while the word baseball comes first in the phrase "baseball trip," it shouldn’t be the only word. Those nine innings a night – or more if you’re lucky! – are just the fun glue to which your actual memories will stick.

Speaking of which, if you pardon me, I have a Twins game to watch and walleye on a stick to munch.