Day 18/May 19 On to Deer Lodge

This was such a strange weather day. We didn’t leave too early because we wanted to miss the rain predicted in the morning. Well, that never really materialized until we got on the road. That and some nice and strong winds out of the west. What great tailwinds those would be if we were heading east. As luck would have it we were headed south so we had to turn the handlebars toward the edge of the road to keep from being blown into the highway. We thought that perhaps the wind might start coming out of the west so that when we eventually headed east again, we could benefit from a nice push. Don’t know what we were thinking because that would never happen.

We stopped in the small town of Drummond – how many big towns are there out here?- and had a better breakfast and took refuge from the weather. We didn’t rush to leave, but figured if we had to fight the wind that we should get back on the road to Deer Lodge. We did plan on visiting the Grant Kohrs ranch (listen to a podcast of the ranch at the bottom of the page)there and having dinner with some people who knew the area well.

Deer Lodge had an interesting old jail and really was an oasis in the middle of nowhere. We carefully watched the weather as there was a winter storm advisory. We were glad that we didn’t do the Scenic Pinter Road as we heard that had snow already. Although the weather was quite chilly when we started the ride in Astoria, we had gotten used to not having serious precipitation for a long while. And we weren’t expecting precipitation in the form of snow.