15APRIL2013 near Big Timber, MT -

Upon awakening I look out to an inch of snow and it's still coming down.  It is only about 6 miles of snowy paddling to get the canoe into town, so that is what I think will happen, but I doubt I will sleep in the tent tonight.  The high temperature being only about 40 today, I expect most of this snow will still be around later today when the tent is to go up. 
At 1230 I was passing the flashing time/temp sign for the Conoco station and saw 27 degrees.  This after paddling 5 miles and walking up from the riverbank.  Beginning my paddling at about 1030 I found the occasional headwind to be far more problematic than one might expect.  Headwinds are always a nuisance at best, but this one was with temperatures in the 20s ... unh hunh!  Fortunately it was not constant and I chose to position myself far left against a cliff face where possible, thus blocking the wind a bit.  On occasion the sun was out and once I noticed steam above a gravel bank - snow melts and almost instantly becomes steam if the sun is bright.  Fortunately also is that the river has become much more tame.  Not once today was I feeling the slightest danger as the rapids have become gravelly riffles.  It is vastly more enjoyable to keep one's shoes dry.  Winter is the prevailing look.  The green I saw was moss on south facing slopes where water seeps out.  That green was seemingly extremely bright and colorful and such is the reality when in a gray and tan and black and brown landscape. 
Wildlife seen today were geese and deer.  I suspect they were whitetail but seeing them from a distance and not spooking them into flight I am not sure.  I do not remember seeing ducks ... could it be that I simply do not consider them worth noting any more?  I mean, surely there were some ducks ... but, ... none were noted, so consider it a duckless day ... perhaps the 1st in the history of Montana. 
As today ends I am once more at the Super 8 Motel and the canoe is about a mile away, a short distance upstream from the rodeo grounds. 
I've been slowly accumulating knowledge about the Corps of Discovery.  Some of the items mentioned in previous days have been my supposition and slowly I am getting it straight.  Today my interest has been focused on July 18th of 1806.  It appears that on that date, and possibly also on the 17th, the expedition was in five different places.  Imagine being fifteen hundred miles from St Louis and having the confidence that they could split up into five separate parties.  Lewis was in the Marias basin with three others, looking for some semblance of a northwest passage.  He left Gass and five others to stay at Great Falls, meet the Ordway party and move downriver to Loma.  Ordway and nine others were near Ulm and would meet up with Gass the next day.  Clark was at or near Park City engaged in a 5 day canoe building effort.  He had eight folks with him including the Charbonneau family of three.  He had dispatched Pryor and three others with their horses to ride/drive them overland to the Mandan villages in North Dakota.  So there it is ... on that date the largest group of the expedition was the Ordway 10 floating down the Missouri near Ulm.  I say again that I am in awe of the confidence of these frontiersmen that they could do such a thing.  That they successfully reunited adds to the awe.