Floating Static Route

Hello Network Lessons. Unless I’m missing something this lab doesn’t make sense.
There is no Rip protocol running on R3, so even though the 192.168.23.0 network shows up in the routing table on R1 from it’s relationship with R2, that network is unreachable from R1 to R3 interface of 192.168.23.3. You cannot ping that IP, as R3 as no idea about the 12.0 network:

R1#ping 192.168.23.3

Type escape sequence to abort.
Sending 5, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 192.168.23.3, timeout is 2 seconds:
.....
Success rate is 0 percent (0/5)

The only way I can reach 23.3 on R3 from R1 is to source my ping address of the directly connected link to R3:

R1#ping 192.168.23.3 source ethernet 0/1
Type escape sequence to abort.
Sending 5, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 192.168.23.3, timeout is 2 seconds:
Packet sent with a source address of 192.168.13.1
!!!!!
Success rate is 100 percent (5/5), round-trip min/avg/max = 88/90/92 ms

R1 will never be able to reach the 23.3 address on R3 if there is a:
no static route configured to reach that network; or b:
no routing protocol running on R3.

What am I missing here??