When I had to work in Harlowton for a day I would always go to Townsend and take the Deep Creek cut off.
I do believe I have missed that road. Maybe next time we go to White Sulfur we will do it. There are some lonely roads for sure.
Harlowton was one of the towns we went through on the way down and of course went though Townsend on way to Helena from Three Forks.
Once this summer I drove the 80 miles from Jordan to Miles City and all I passed were 2 hay swathers and one concrete truck all while killing a couple million grass hoppers.
On way to sisters memorial, wife wanted to go into Hays, we came out on the wrong road, ( I told her it was wrong road) she said it would get us to Harlem, she was correct, but we ended up taking a 30 mile detour via about 20 miles on the Lodge Pole cut across and then 10 miles back to Hwy 66 on Rte 11 and we didn't see another vehicle, but a lot of cows and horses and only a couple ranch houses.
Lots of roads you can drive right down the center and be way more apt to hit a deer or cow than another car. In fact on some rural roads at night I drive down the center, which gives me room on either side to dodge deer and you can always tell if there is another car coming because their lights will show up
I seldom get down to your area, or up in the north east corner by Plentywood or the north west corner by Eureka, but I think I have that I have been to over 90% of the towns and villages in the state.
I have hit 3 different deer, barely missed several, managed to get through a herd of elk once at about 70mph without hitting any (close though), missed a bear in the road, followed behind a herd of antelope running down a road several times and bumped several cows while dodging a lot of them. In eastern Montana there are lots of gravel roads on open range, where the cows basically have the right of way.
"Go west and take the first road to the left"
Ok, but remember that except for access gates to hay meadows or wheat fields, there may not be an actual road on the left for 37 miles
Or like years ago when getting directions to a ranch to shoot prairie dogs, I was told to turn off the highway and go to the first left then take the second left and their ranch has a big red barn. After spending the after noon lost on some interesting and lonely back roads of eastern Montana, I questioned the direction giver and after some discussion I found that the first left I had taken was supposed to be ignored because everyone knew it just wondered off into some broken up country where nobody lived.
