A Selanne Weekend and onto Mexico

We are in Tucson at the Pima Fairgrounds and will be traveling into Mexico with the Escapees Mexican Connectioin in the morning. Earlier this month we stayed at Bolsa Chica State Park in Huntington Beach to celebrate the retirement of Teemu Selanne's number. We had boght a 6 game Hockey pass especially to be able to go to the game where the ceremony was to take place. We read about some other things going on related to this and so decided to make a weekend of it. We arrived at Bolsa Chica on Thursday.the 8th.

Thursday night there was a documentary on Teemu at the Newport Beach Cinema. It was an interesting film about his early home life in Finland and his early days of hockey up to his retirement. He was also there for a question and answer section which was fun.


Teemu Ilmari Selänne (Finnish pronunciation: [ˈteːmu ˈilmɑri ˈselænːe]), nicknamed "The Finnish Flash" (born July 3, 1970), is a Finnishformer professional ice hockey winger. He began his professional career in 1989–90 with Jokerit of the SM-liiga and played 21 seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) for the Winnipeg Jets, Anaheim Ducks, San Jose Sharks and Colorado Avalanche. Selänne is the highest scoring Finn in NHL history, and one of the highest overall; he retired in 2014 11th all-time with 684 goals and 15th with 1,457 points. He holds numerous team scoring records for both the Winnipeg/Arizona franchise and the Anaheim Ducks  Per Wiikipedia
He has two brothers, one his twin and an older brother. As a rookie playing for the Winnipeg Jets he scored 76 goals, a league record to this day.

 Friday night we went to Selanne Steak Tavern in Laguna Beach. It is a great restaurant with great service and wonderful food. It is a steakhouse and so Joe had a steak and I had short ribs with polenta. We had a side of Teemu's Mac and Cheese which we hear was very good and it was delicious. We even had some leftover to take home to enjoy for lunch the next day. We also had some scallops for an appetizer which were excellent. A little pricey but well worth it for a special night out. 
Saturday we went over to the South Coast Plaza area where they had a room set up with all his trophies and some jerseys and other hockey items from his career. The Stanley Cup was there also as he was a big part of the Ducks Win in 2007.

Then the big night on Sunday. We met Kristi and Brock at the Honda Center for the big game. They had a large tent in the parking area where we bought some souvenirs including some tee shirts. When we entered the Center everyone got a little clip on light that blinked when you turned it on. This made for an awesome effect when the ceremony for Teemu started and there were little blinking lights all over. -There were many former Ducks on the stage, including Scott Niedermayer, Saka  Koivu, Chris Pronger and Jean-Sebastien Giguere who got lots of applause.

-Former Duck George Parros narrated a video which was nicely done.. Kariya appeared in the video, to cheers from fans. He was out of the country and couldn't attend, A great moment was when Ducks owner Henry Samueli said it was a strange summer not having Teenu informing him that he was coming back again as he had talked about retiring every year after the Ducks won the Stanley Cup. All the fans chanted One More Year.All the Ducks came out and shook his hand. Finally the Jersey was raised to the rafters as Selanne and his family looked on. What a wonderful ceremony and tribute to one of the great Hockey Players of all time. Lots of tears were shed that night. Another nice touch was when the Ducks and the Jets did their practice before the game they all had on jerseys with Teemu' name and number(13 for the Jets players as that was his number when on that team and number 8 his number for the Ducks. It was a good game with the Ducks winning which was another great moment.

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It was a great weekend. We went back to Jojoba for a short while and then headed down to Silver Strand in San Diego for the weekend. We planned to take the MH in for service and then head towards Tucson, which we did. Our weekend had a sad ending as that was when we got word that my Dad had passed away. We are going to have a Celebration of Life for him when we get back from Mexico. We miss him a lot.

We got the MH serviced and headed out to the Yuma area where we boondocked on American Girl Mine Rd where we stayed last year for awhile. It was a nice relaxing time with just a little rain. We are now in Tucson. I probably won't be able to do any blogs until we get back from Mexico but hope we will have some nice stories and pictures to share.