Florida-Chapter 4: Jacksonville vs. Vikings

The day of the game was our last full day in Jacksonville.  We drove to the tailgating lots and immediately saw tons of purple.  For some reason, we were somewhat nervous about how the fans would be.  We have never had an issue with the home team's fans ever, except for Philly.  In fact, the Jacksonville fans were some of the best fans we've ever encountered.  They were more than friendly and nice to us.   One of my good friends from the past was also down in Jacksonville at the same time hanging out with a couple of people I was friends with back in the day and they were all going to the game too.  We never ended up seeing each the whole time we were down there.  I think that he'd rather be drunk with his friends than make the effort to see us.  Oh well, some things never change and some people seemed to have not grown up.  

Tailgating was fun.  The parking lots themselves were kinda weird, with not much people cooking, but just sitting there in chairs.  It was a very subdued, relaxed crowd.  Even with the Vikings fans that we met, hardly a one was actually from Minnesota.  We've increasingly seen more and more purple on the road and have come to realize that even though we have some very fair-weathered fans in Minnesota, there is a very loyal fan base around the country.  

The game started out great!  The Vikings defense scored right away on a fumble and shortly into the 1st quarter, the score was 14-0.  The stadium itself was really nothing special, especially after just being at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa the week before.  Even the name of Jacksonville's stadium is blah.....Jacksonville Municipal Stadium.  It used to be Alltel Stadium so I am not sure what happened to change that.  The fans and their loyalty to a team that is just mediocre was so reminiscent of the Vikings.  Their fans/team reminded us so much of the Vikings, to the point we felt sorry for them a little.   We just happened to have things go our way that day and came out with a win.  We have only seen 1 win on the road prior to this game and that was a preseason game in Seattle so it was nice to finally see a regular season win.  Thank you, Jacksonville fans.  Your hospitality was awesome!

Tailgating with the other Vikings fans

At the Entrance

Jacksonville Municipal Stadium

The Vikings entering onto the field

Look at all the purple!

Look at the scoreboard-4th Quarter, 4th and 4 with the ball on the 4.  

After the game, I went out to the beach in front of our hotel.  I took this picture of the hotel.  Michael is on our balcony.  He's on the top floor about in the middle in a white t-shirt.  See him?

We stayed and relaxed at the hotel for the rest of the night.  We left Jacksonville around 11 am Monday and headed south almost 6 hours back to the Gulf Coast to Fort Myers to spend the rest of our trip there.