High Prairie in Winter

Thursday's sunrise was spectacular. I was driving west to the town of Geyser and the Surprise Creek Hutterite Colony, but when I caught a glimpse of the light show in the eastern sky I decided it was worth pulling over and taking a decent photo (instead of one of my "point the camera and shoot" without looking in the viewfinder to see what I've got.) This photo was taken just a mile or less west of Lewistown. The pinks in the clouds spilled across the sky and could be seen even if you were looking southwest.
Below is another photo taken on the same drive, in the vicinity of Windham (a tiny town just off the main road.) The view in the photo is to the south, southwest and is about 35 miles west of Lewistown. By this point the morning pinks are either gone or fading fast, but the lighting is still very interesting. The mountains are part of the Little Belt Mountains, one of many isolated mountain ranges on the high prairie of this part of Montana.

 By the time I arrived at the Surprise Creek Colony for the morning's art session, the storm clouds that had been bunching up on the western horizon over the Rocky Mountain Front were beginning to spill across the prairie and snag on the isolated mountain ranges. This next photo shows the Colony as I approach, driving south from the main road. I'll have to post another photo sometime that shows this view in nicer weather, as it is a very picturesque setting. The mountains are foothills of the Belts.

The drive home to Lewistown that day provided some beautiful sky views too. Here (below) is a hint of what views were seen on the 75 mile trip back to Lewistown at the end of the day. The view is southwest of the main road as I was heading east.