Young Chang When Carla and Mike Parker...

Young Chang

When Carla and Mike Parker got to the Olympic Stadium in Montreal

last month, Carla Parker had no qualms about rubbing it in a little

that she had now been to all 30 baseball stadiums in the United

States while her husband Mike had only been to 29.

“I love baseball and the coolest thing too is my dad actually took

me to my first stadium... in Houston,” said Carla Parker, who lives

in Costa Mesa with her husband.

Parker makes a distinction between travel stadiums, ones that

aren’t in her area, and nearby stadiums. Her first “real” baseball

stadium visit was to Anaheim Stadium, now Edison International Field,

also with her father.

To make the number an even and final 30 for Carla, the couple flew

to Toronto from Orange County in July and spent 10 days visiting different parts of Canada and driving down the East Coast.

“I’ve just always been a baseball player and a baseball fan. We

both are,” said Mike Parker, who has yet to visit the stadium in

Atlanta, Ga. “Also, it’s a blast to do because you get to see so much

history going through all the states and all the areas.”

The day after they arrived in Toronto, the couple visited Niagara

Falls in the afternoon and then watched, of course, a baseball game

in Toronto at night. They drove to Montreal the next day, visited the

Olympic Stadium and then drove through Vermont, New Hampshire and

Maine on following days.

“It’s a great place, a little bit like Balboa Island,” said Mike

Parker, of Bar Harbor, Maine. “It’s just breathtakingly beautiful and

great lobster.”

Carla Parker agreed.

“We ate lobster on a pier ‘cause that’s what you would do in

Maine,” said the 45-year-old.

The pair also ran into a friend there -- Eric Tweit, athletic

director at Newport Harbor High School.

From Bar Harbor, the Parkers drove to Kennebunkport and looked at

the outside of former President George Bush’s house.

“The Bushs’ house sticks out of the water. You can see it really

easy,” said Mike Parker, 57.

The Kennedy compound, which the travelers saw in Hyannis on Cape

Cod, wasn’t so easy to see.

Newport, R.I. was their next stop and one of the prettiest places

the couple has ever seen. The trip continued with a night in Atlantic

City, a minor league game in Princeton, W. Va. and some time spent

with Mike Parker’s daughter in Charlottesville, Va.

“We visited all kinds of battlefields. It was great,” he said.

The trip involved a total of 3,000 driven miles and upped the

number of states each Parker had visited to 49.

* Have you, or someone you know, gone on an interesting vacation

recently? Tell us your adventures. Drop us a line to TRAVEL TALES,

330 W. Bay St., Costa Mesa, CA 92627; e-mail young.chang@

latimes.com; or fax to (949) 646-4170.