July 1 Jordan, Montana, Day 31 76 miles 6:56
On the road early for heat. More rolling terrain, up a hundred feet, down a hundred, all day. Little wind. Some cloud cover until lunch so the heat wasn't too oppressive. Michele is anxious about thunderstorms since hearing about golfball-sized hail.
We saw pronghorn antelope along the way. Sand Springs was closed when we arrived. The proprietor, Daisy Dutton, saw us dismount, so she came out to open up the store. She sat with us in the shade of her tree and told us stories while we ate. She must be in her eighties. She's still active and lives alone, though one of her sons lives nearby. Her father came to the area from the Pennsylvania Amish. Daisy's father's family's hired hand, spurned by one of the daughters, murdered the parents and four of the children. Daisy's father, one of the surviving children, never employed a hired man. Daisy's husband was a WWII flier. After the war, he ranched mostly, and flew coyote bounty hunters and deer hunting parties. Daisy would go to Jordan a week or two in advance of her due date to be close to the hospital for delivering her children. For one child, the horses couldn't make it through the snow, so they had to turn back. Fortunately, they were able to get through a few days later before there was a crisis.
Michele spotted a toad on the sidewalk outside our motel. I carried across the street to a weedy lot.
The proprietor of the Hell Creek Bar is renowned for his broasted chicken. In his younger days, he was a champion at the logging contests. He would climb a hundred-foot pole in twenty seconds wearing his spiked boots and climbing rope.