Day 21: there aint nothing in hammond

Colin:

We slept in a bit to take advantage of the real bed and had breakfast with one of our hosts. We shared a fascinating conversation about the saint labre school as well as life on the reservations more generally. Then we went down to the saint labre school itself to tour the museum and see some of the preparations for that day's high school graduation ceremony.
The chapel alone was worth the visit as it highlighted the complex combination of Catholocism and traditional Crow and Cheyenne spirituality practiced by a majority of the natives in the area.
Hitting the road a bit after 10 am we left with what we thought of as the modest goal of reaching Hammond Montana.
After some "nuisance hills" and a brief rainstorm, we ate lunch in a bit of shade afforded by the only roadside trees visible for a couple of miles in either direction.
Arriving in Broadus around 2 pm we stopped by the only store we could find for a snack.
When asked, the clerk told Carol that "there aint nothing in hammond but 3 abandoned buildings."
Our choices were to stay in Broadus and leave ourselves a very long trip or an extra day to reach spearfish or to push on another 57 miles to alzada.
Feeling good, and being foolhardy we elected to continue.
We moved right along as a large rainstorm loomed ominously just to the west of the road, but thankfully we never got hit.
Upon reaching Hammond we saw the truth of the shopkeepers words as Hammond indeed seemed to be made up of 3 burned and/or collapsed buildings, a single home and its own post office.
Eventually we reached Alzada, a relatively large community of 29 where we were invited to camp for free at the local convenience store and rv park.
The gentleman who cooked our dinner treated us to an uninvited and slightly bizarre diatribe about gun rights and an education on different categories of firearms and bullets. I still couldnt tell you how that came about.
We settled in for the evening, thoroughly confused but felt compensated by the first unspoiled night sky of our trip and the thought of the shorter day into Spearfish, south dakota to follow.

104 miles

1257 miles total.