Nothing says summer like going to a baseball game. A group of Rapid City residents found that out during a whirlwind bus tour of seven national ballparks last month.

Doreen Arneson of Rapid City was one of 34 passengers on Prairie Coach Trailways Major League Baseball Extravaganza, which covered 2,600 miles and hit seven Midwest stadiums in eight days. As an avid baseball fan, she traveled alone among other baseball enthusiasts who ranged from fanatical to those only mildly interested in the sport. Passengers included fathers and sons, grandparents and grandchildren, husbands and wives - all united to experience America's national pastime.

"You can't beat a summer evening at the ballpark," Arneson said. There is something about being with thousands of other people who want to be there. There's such a thrill hearing the crack of that bat and seeing them running around the bases."

Dick and Ruth Camp of Rapid City have taken the tour two years in a row and said the experiences are never the same.

"Each game is different with different teams playing the home teams. It's not like going to the same attraction over and over again," Ruth Camp said. She said they cheered for the home teams wherever they went.

The trip took them to see the Kansas City Royals at Kauffman Stadium, the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium, the Cincinnati Reds at the Great American Ballpark, the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field, the Chicago White Sox at the U.S. Cellular Field and the Milwaukee Brewers at Miller Park. It ended with a Minnesota Twins game at the Metrodome.

Dick Camp said the ballparks were a good cross-section of old and new.

"There's a real contrast between Wrigley Field in Chicago

and Miller Park in Milwaukee," he said. Wrigley Field still uses a wooden scoreboard that has to be updated manually, and Miller Park has a huge retractable roof that can be closed during inclement weather.

He said Kauffman Stadium is a beautiful park even though it is 40 years old. "They have waterfalls in the outfield. It's a nice field."

In addition to the games, trip organizers squeezed in side trips to the St. Louis Slugger Museum and Factory, the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame Museum, the Harry Carey Restaurant and the "Field of Dreams" movie location in Dyersville, Iowa.

Mike Weiler of Rapid City said it was an extremely active schedule.

"I compare that busy schedule with what barnstorming was like in the olden days when teams got on buses and they just went from town to town to play," he said. "But we went from town to town to watch. The hours were unbelievable."

He said passengers got up very early in the morning the first four or five days and dragged themselves into a hotel at 11 that night.

"We didn't even unpack our luggage, I don't think. We just dug in them for what we needed," he said.

That demanding schedule brought Weiler closer to fulfilling his goal of visiting all 30 major league baseball fields in his lifetime.

"I only have seven left to go, not counting do-overs," he said.

The Busch stadium he visited on this trip was not the same stadium he visited in the past. And he said he has to go back to the new Yankee Stadium, as well as the stadiums in Seattle and San Francisco.

Arneson said she remembers listening to baseball games on the radio as a young farm girl from the Tulare area. Her love of the sport blossomed when her sons began playing Little League.

As a Cubs fan, she said she likes to keep up with the teams and the box scores, especially now that the season is winding down. After riding 300 miles in the morning from Cincinnati to Chicago for an afternoon game, she was rewarded when her beloved team beat the Cardinals 3-2 in the 11th inning on Aug. 8 - the same day that Wrigley Stadium celebrated its 20th anniversary of having lights.

"Albert Pujols, an unsung hero from the St. Louis Cards, hit a grand slam. That is not a common thing you see every day at the ballpark. Jim Edmonds, who used to be a Cardinal, hit two home runs that game, so that made it even more special," she said.

A self-proclaimed baseball fan since the age of 6, Weiler said he did not get many chances to go to games growing up in Missoula, Mont. "You can't go to games when you live in Missoula. It's too far away from anything," he said.

After completing basic training, he traded in a ticket home for a ticket to visit a friend in New York City, where he went to Yankee Stadium one day and Shea Stadium the next.

"I thought at that time, 'Wow, I should try to go see all of them,'" he said.

That was 30 years ago. Sometimes his job as the financial manager for the Army National Guard takes him to big cities across the country, and the first thing he does is check to see if there is a game, which has helped him toward his goal.

His wife, Teresa, who also went on the bus tour, has 22 more stadiums to go. "That just means I get to go to some more games," he said.

Arneson said she would gladly sign up again for the tour, which included transportation, hotel accommodations and tickets to the seven ballgames.

Darcy Kahler of Dell Rapids, administrative assistant for Prairie Coach Trailways said she will not know until early next spring, when the teams' schedules are released, what next year's bus route will be.

"It takes a while to put schedules together and decide which direction we are going to go and where," Kahler said. "Last year, we did six games in seven days. We added Cincinnati this year to fill an open day. … Next year, it could be we end up in Detroit instead."

Dick Camp said they could have arranged a similar trip themselves but decided to opt for the convenience of an organized trip.

"It's hard for them to arrange a bus tour where you find this many people in hometowns that are within driving distance of a day," he said. "They buy the tickets, get the hotel rooms and get us to the games and pick us up. It's just a good experience."

To add to it, one meal a day was planned at a ballpark, which meant daily doses of hot dogs, brats and beer, he said.

Both Camps agreed that the Chicago Cubs fans are the most enthusiastic fan club they had ever seen. "You can get involved in the excitement, too, of course," Dick Camp said. "It's a fun thing. We definitely would go again."

Weiler said his wife enjoys the patriotic aspect of going to baseball games, from the national anthem and the ceremony of the first pitch to bringing little kids on the field at the start of the game and the camaraderie during the seventh-inning stretch.

Arneson agrees.

"There's something that gets in your system," Arneson said. "They don't call it the national pastime for nothing."