Canada/West 2022:
Day 23 - Lewis and Clark State Park

	Thursday, September 1, 2022: We awoke refreshed after a great night in the tent, and were on the road shortly after 7:30 AM.
	Breakfast was sliced turkey sandwiches, made possible through supplies purchased at the Old Faithful General Store.
	The sun was just climbing over the mountains to the east as we drove through Gallatin Gateway, a small town near the road junction to Big Sky, Montana. We continued north on US-191, headed toward Bozeman.
	The road stayed with the Gallatin River, ...
	... through incredibly beautiful terrain, with huge rock outcroppings, ...
	... rolling hills, ...
	... and grasslands dotted with horses.
	Just after 8:30 AM, we arrived in Bozeman, Montana. Want a quick tour? Here's the Lewis and Clark Motel, ...
	... and the main street that runs through the town, ...
	... and some beautifully maintained apartment buildings that looked like converted mansions, ...
	... the Rialto Theater, ...
	... and finally the Bozeman Public Library. We had walked through the sculpture garden at the library the last time we were here.
	Headed east on I-90, we left Bozeman behind. There were still mountains off in the distance, but they were no longer quite so close.
	We reached the outskirts of Billings, Montana, just before 11 AM. You know what's in Billings, right?
	That's right! The only Carbone's Pizza in the west!
	It was right at 11 AM when we walked up to the front door, ...
	... and had a seat in our favorite Minnesota-themed pizzeria.
	Debbie pretended to look at the menu so that we didn't seem like the fanatics that we are, ...
	... and ordered a large Carbone's Special. They don't actually have a Carbone's Special here, so what you do is order a combo, delete the black olives, and add shrimp. Unfortunately, they were out of shrimp today, but we still enjoyed it.
	There were enough leftovers to fill three containers, which was perfect.
	By noon we were back on the road, headed south toward downtown Billings.
	There were some cool vintage neon and electric bulb signs like this one for the 1145 Club.
	Billings isn't too crowded, and there was very little traffic, which was nice.
	Hopefully, the Babcock Theater is showing vintage movies, and this isn't the first time they've shown The Fifth Element.
	Check out this metal awning structure over this intersection!
	We drove by Le Fournil, a bakery recommended by our friends, Tom and Dianne. Unfortunately there was no parking anywhere near the store, so we drove by without stopping.
	The neon sign for the Rainbow Bar probably looked amazing after dark.
	We took the scenic route out of Billings, ...
	... over the Yellowstone River, before joining up with I-90/I-94 headed east.
	Just east of Billings is where eastbound I-94 begins, and I-90 and I-94 don't meet up again until Tomah, Wisconsin. Tomah is known as the town "where the I divides," and the same could apparently be said of Billings, Montana. We took I-94 headed north and east toward North Dakota.
	Surprising no one, we were once again on the Purple Heart Trail.
	We dubbed this "the shortest passenger train ever."
	We drove through Miles City, ...
	... alongside this old trestle bridge, ...
	... and across the Yellowstone River just outside of Glendive, Montana, ...
	... where we left I-94 and continued northeast on State Highway 16. We still drove alongside the Yellowstone River, which was nice.
	There's some great detail on this ranch sign. These signs really are works of art.
	We were enjoying the amazing rock formations along the road, which we were going to soon leave behind as we were reaching the end of the mountains and entering the Great Plains.
	Just after 4 PM, we drove past the Richland Memorial Park cemetery where some of Debbie's distant Lindevig relatives are buried. We had stopped here just last year, so we didn't feel the need to stop this time.
	The McDonald's in Sidney was closed for remodeling, so we had no choice ...
	... but to drive through Sidney, ...
	... to Taco John's. It was hard, but we managed to order a reasonable amount of tater tots, a pair of tacos for Debbie that didn't have beans, and a delicious burrito for Tom.
	We crossed over the border into North Dakota, ...
	... and on to the Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site.
	Debbie said that the place looked very familiar, and sure enough, there were train tracks that ran right by the road across from the site. We had been right by here when we rode Amtrak from Seattle to Chicago back in 2012.
	We had changed time zones from Mountain to Central when we crossed the border into North Dakota, and we had arrived about an hour after closing. We knew that was going to happen, and that was okay, because we were here ...
	... for the Mather plaque that was on the road leading up to the site. What we hadn't counted on was that the gate at the entrance to the road would be closed and that we wouldn't be able to get anywhere near the plaque.
	Fortunately, Debbie's amazing camera came to the rescue with its powerful 40x optical zoom.
	Here's an Adopt-a-Highway sign from North Dakota, which is the design that jumpstarted our Adopt-a-Highway sign collection last year.
	We drove down the road a ways until we got to Williston, North Dakota.
	Sure enough, we had stopped at this Amtrak station back in 2012 and had taken a picture of this very sign from the other side.
	We were in oilfield country, with oil rigs everywhere, ...
	... and flare stacks visible in the fading light.
	That looks like a lake in the distance, but it is really just a very wide section of the Missouri River. It also happens to run right by ...
	... the Lewis and Clark State Park, our destination for this day.
	We drove the winding road through the park to get to the campground, ...
	... to beautiful site number 1. Tom set up the tent, ...
	... the sun sank, ...
	... and we enjoyed the last few minutes of our skylight.
	Just before 8 PM, we decided to attach the rainfly because rain was clearly coming for us. The wind was starting to pick up and there was thunder in the distance.
	Debbie got this blurry photo of a flare stack off in the hills beyond the river through the mesh window of our tent. The storm came through shortly after that, but we got very little rain from it. Day 24 >