Northern Return - Day 3 (Glacier to Rapid City)

This morning I got up early and was on the road by 7am for a looonnng drive to Rapid City, SD. I made my way through the farmlands and small towns of Montana east of Glacier, through the Great Falls area and then south on 89 through the Lewis and Clark National Forest which is beautiful. This trip makes me wish I had paid more attention in Geology class. :) So many cool geological processes to research when I get home about the things I've seen. Coming out of the Lewis and Clark National Forest, I came into one of the areas that I think is definitely one of my favorites of the whole trip, the valley through the Big Belt Mountains down to Livingston is what I imagined when people say 'Big Sky Country'. A wide verdant valley flanked by majestic mountains and a sky where you can see the shadows the clouds make on the mountains because everything is so open. I stopped for lunch in Livingston and then trucked across I-90 through Billings and on to the Crow Reservation which takes you into Wyoming. The Bighorn National Forest on the Wyoming border is also really beautiful and colorful. Coming across Wyoming around Buffalo and Gillette there were some crazy pelting rainstorms for about an hour in the evening, hard enough that I actually pulled off the road for a few minutes until it let up but that made for full rainbows and a stunning sunset as I made my way through the Black Hills National Forest and into Rapid City for the night.

Lewis and Clark National Forest, Montana