20-Oct-2001 -- After an excellent lunch at the Whole Famdamily restaurant in Lewistown, Kirsten and I headed west in search of our third confluence point of the day. From the topo maps, this looked to be the easiest of the three - less than a mile from paved road, with only a single knob to provide any detectable elevation change at all.

As has happened to me before, we were lucky to find a house poised right on the 110th meridian. I walked up to the house, but no one was home. Again looking for No Trespassing signs and finding none, I set out for the confluence point, while Kirsten stayed in the car to perform the noble service of talking to the landowners if they happened to arrive while I was away.

As it turned out though, I was little more than a minute down the driveway before the landowners arrived. Kirsten explained the situation as I walked back, and I greeted the Mickelson family warmly as I repeated Kirsten's explanation. They were interested in finding out about the confluence and seemed happy to let me go on once I gave them the website for the Degree Confluence Project.

The walk to the confluence point was uneventful save for an unexpected creek that actually had water in it - something that's been unusual in this very dry year. I came over the knob and found the confluence point just after the sun sank behind dark clouds on the western horizon, so I hastily used what remaining light there was and took my photos. The best photos were from the knob just north of the confluence point, with the Big Snowy Mountains to the east-southeast and the Little Belt Mountains to the south.

The drive back to Billings was uneventful, and we wondered what the record was for most confluences visited in a day, knowing that three was far too few.