June 14 Conrad to Dutton, Montana

our refuge in the storm 

Our waitress who hike across America 

 https://ridewithgps.com/trips/93359973

We were again glad to be inside last night as it was rainy and cold. Sounded like we had a good chance of rain today plus wind (“It’s always windy here”) and, unlike much of the country, only up to about 50.  But it wasn’t raining, so off we went. The wind was again mainly coming from our side and we were on a road with little traffic as it parallels the interstate quite closely. After a snack stop in Brady, the rain started, making for a cold, wet, miserable ride. Kay thought “I don’t like riding in this rain, but I know they really need it here.” We had been hearing how they were in a bad drought around here that was severely affecting the crops. We soldiered on until we got to Dutton, where we stopped at the Dutton Drive-In, a diner with a bunch of pickup trucks outside, and parked our bikes on the lee side of the building and headed in to get some hot food, which was very welcomed. Here we debated what to do. We were only halfway to our intended destination and there wasn’t hotels that we knew of before getting there. We asked the waitress if there was any possibilities in town. There was a pavilion in the park but with the worsening wind that wouldn’t work. We looked up the churches in town but didn’t reach anyone.  We set off again and we had to go a short ways against the wind and rain and it chilled us so fast that we knew we couldn’t go on to our original destination. We stopped at a business and asked, then decided to go by the churches, starting with the Lutheran church. There were no cars there, but the door was unlocked! Shortly afterwards 2 women showed up one carrying a knife. Turns out that they had been working on a project and had left to get some lunch. The knife was for opening shipping boxes containing new toys for the nursery. We pitched in and helped by assembling a play kitchen. We are able to stay in the church building for the night. We walked back to the diner for dinner and found out our  waitress and her parents and sister had walked across much of the country—Vermont to New York and Wisconsin to Washington state and then more after that.