Headed home

Day 24
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Saint Mary, MT to Billings, MT
402 miles

In our minds, today marks the end of our sightseeing and the beginning of our journey east to Maryland. We do plan more sightseeing in Minneapolis and Chicago, but they seem more like waypoints between Glacier National Park and Clarksville than destinations.

Our planned early launch hit a bit of a SNAFU this morning when we forgot to install the linchpin that fastens the tow bar to the receiver. After hooking up, when Frank pulled forward the bar and ball pulled loose, dropping the tongue of the trailer on the ground with a hideous grinding bang. Fortunately, a twenty minute delay was the worst of the damage. Frank, Elliot and a neighbor man from Florida jacked the tongue up using a piston jack and cribbing high enough to get the dolly back under the tongue. We then reinstalled the bar properly, hooked up the trailer, and started toward Great Falls.

After more than a week in the wilderness without electricity and heat, during which we experienced overnight lows in the thirties and a frustrating lack of grocery stores with wholesome food, we were delighted to find a Wal-Mart Supercenter where we purchased, among other things, fresh meat, a wrist watch for Frank, sundry dry goods, fresh fruits and vegetables, propane, and ice. The best part was that we paid normal prices. We spent the rest of the afternoon traversing the cattle ranches of central Montana by way of Routes 87, 191 and 3. We appreciated the “big sky” country with its cloudless blue canopy and brilliant sunshine. It was very uplifting to shed the cloudiness of the northwest in favor of the desert high plains.

We reached the Billings KOA at about 5:30 and set up in a cottonwood grove on the bank of the Yellowstone River. We learned that this Billings KOA was the world's first, established in 1962, and it was quite nice.  Unfortunately, today was the height of seed dispersal for cottonwoods and we now know firsthand how they got their name. The volume of seed puffs floating through the air and piling up on everything around was astounding. As prolific as they are, we can’t figure out why cottonwoods haven’t taken over the world.

After eating a barbeque dinner in the campground, we decided to drive the short distance to Dehler Park to see a Pioneer “rookie” League game between the hometown Billings Mustangs and the Missoula Osprey. This is the lowest level of professional baseball. The Pioneer League is made up of 8 teams from larger towns in Montana, Utah, Idaho and Wyoming. The bus rides must be brutal!

As it turned out, it was a perfect night for baseball and the game was very exciting. After the sixth inning, the Mustangs were down 3-1, but managed to come back and score one run in the eighth and one run in the ninth to tie the game. After holding the Osprey scoreless in the top of the tenth, Billings came up and scored the winning run on a fielding error by the Missoula first baseman. It was clearly a lower level of play than other minor league games we’ve watched in Frederick and Bowie, but that really didn’t matter. It was a beautiful stadium; we parallel parked on a residential street across the street from the right field fence; we were given three free tickets by a kind man who asked us if we needed them and then refused any money; we paid $3 for the fourth ticket and then sat in the third row even with first base. There were probably 2,000 people there—providing excellent chances of getting a foul ball, although we didn’t catch one.

Dehler Park is new and very nice. We had no idea that rookie leaguers played in such nice places. Outside the main gate (behind home plate), we were pleasantly surprised to find a statue of Dave McNally wearing an Orioles uniform with number 19 on it. We asked an usher and he said that McNally was a native of Billings and one of two local boys who played in the Major Leagues. The other, Jeff Ballard, also happened to pitch for the Baltimore Orioles.

We slept MUCH more soundly in the warmer conditions. It was ironic that once we finally got electricity we didn’t need heat. Such is life.

Tomorrow: North Dakota