On the way home

I'm out of time sequence now, but I'll catch up when I can after we get home. Here's sunrise on the Crazy Mountains, from the parking lot of a Super 8 early this morning in Big Timber, Montana:

And here, not all that visible, is the signature of William Clark of the Lewis and Clark expedition, dated 1806, on Pompey's Pillar, a rock formation visited by Lewis and Clark, and covered with Native American pictographs and the signatures of pioneers, along the Yellowstone River in southern Montana on our way from Big Timber to Glendive:

We climbed the boardwalk steps onto the rock formation so early that the park office wasn't open yet, and the ranger that we met was buzzing around in a golf cart getting ready for the day.  We mentioned the mosquitoes swarming all around us, and he said yes, that was the real Lewis and Clark experience, which they complained about all the time. I looked it up tonight, and sure enough, their journals are full of comments on the "troublesome," "very troublesome" and "extremely troublesome" mesquestors, misquestors, misquitor, misquitoes, misquitors, misqutors, misqutr, missquetors, mosquiters, mosquitors, mosquitos, muskeetor, musqueters, musquetors, musquiters, musquitoes, musquitors, musqueters, and musqutors.  (That's every spelling in the journals, as enumerated by a scholar.) 

Pioneer writings on the rock:

These are the North Dakota Badlands, in the Theodore Roosevelt National Park along I-94 in western North Dakota:

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We passed more oil drilling in southern North Dakota, though not as much as we'd seen up near Williston. Then we rolled across the crop fields of the rest of the state, past the lakes of northern Minnesota and down near Minneapolis, where we're spending tonight. Tomorrow, with luck, we'll reach Indiana, then home on Tuesday night.