Go Mustangs!

Departure City: Bismarck, ND

Destination: Billings, MT

Miles Traveled Today: 416.01

Total Miles: 2316.90

Number of “stops” to get out of Bismarck: 4

Unnecessary souvenirs purchased (in dollars): $127.95

Healthy Snacks: 0

Home Runs: 2

One of the more anticipated stops on our trip, we had a baseball game penciled in. The Twins were on the road, as was the Missoula Team, but the Billings Mustangs happened to be in town on the same night we were. The Mustangs are in the Pioneer League, and are a minor league franchise of the Cincinnati Reds.

As has been the case with every minor league baseball game we have attended, this was just an awesome experience. The Mustangs play in a brand new stadium in downtown Billings, a truly beautiful park, with grass areas down the foul lines by the bullpens. The bullpen pitchers sit on the other side of a low concrete wall right at the edge of the grass. Jake and Tanner both watched a lot of the game there, cheering and shouting for the Mustangs. They each got several high-fives and fist bumps from the players, DURING the game. Needless to say they were thrilled.

Tanner, as last time, was also thrilled by the foul balls. Jake was able to follow the game and knew what was going on, Faith was happy to roll down the hill, which brings me to one of the more embarrassing confessions in my life as a parent: Faith is almost 18 months old and this was her 1^st baseball game. Both Jake and Tanner were at games in an infant snuggly. We have photos of each of them will ballpark dogs that were bigger than them at the time, not so of Faithy. So her “hotdog” photo was high on my agenda for this game. Even more embarrassing was her total disdain of the ballpark dog. She wanted nothing to do with it (thus the only photo we got was of her drinking a Diet Coke in the vicinity of the hot dog).

It started to rain and we left mid-sixth inning to get three tired kids back to our cabin and in for the night. I tried to download the photos and video (all great of course) while trying to get them down and proceeded to delete everything accidentally, so no photos of this part of the trip.