Day 22: Dillon, MT to Whitehall, MT

June 28, 2023

58 miles

Our route for today was relatively flat and followed route 41 straight up to Whitehall. We began our day with breakfast at Sweetwater Coffee. The food and coffee were great - we both ordered sandwich’s/salad to go for lunch. We noted that the coffee shop space was large and especially long - the building used to be a movie theater.

The first 20 miles of the ride were wonderful, as we had a tailwind and averaged over 14 mph, fast on our loaded Surlys! We stopped for lunch at a beautiful fishing pond and picnic site. It was so peaceful..in between the sounds of passing trucks. The second half of the ride was not quite as nice; while equally flat we picked up a headwind which slowed us down quite a bit.

We noticed a quaint little country store, called Granny’s Country Store, along the road in Silver Star. We decided to stop to see if we could get a couple Gatorades. We had an interesting conversation with the owner, who used to fight forest fires in Colorado and Montana, about the dwindling elk population. Again, we heard about the gray wolves who have been killing off the elk. He shared with us the history behind the flawed wolf re-introduction program.

We made it to our home for the night, the Jefferson Inn, essentially a highway motel, which thankfully had a recent ownership change and renovation. Not much to say about Whitehall, except that we will look forward to leaving in the morning! Our choices for dinner were Kentucky Fried Chicken, A&W and Subway. I went for KFC, and Sharon had Subway. Like our riding conditions, our menu selections went downhill as the day progressed. We head to Bozeman, MT in the morning.