Beartooth Highway

In planning our travels to and around Yellowstone, we wanted to drive the Beartooth Highway at some point because I had read where it is one of the most scenic drives in the country.  The Beartooth Highway starts at the northeast entrance of Yellowstone so we knew this would be an all-day adventure.

Because we would be driving to the northeast entrance, we would drive through Lamar Valley where we had heard wolves had been spotted and we had not seen any wolves yet.  We left the camper around  5:30 that morning hoping to get to Lamar Valley early enough to maybe spot some wolves.

It was a crisp, cool morning with a light fog laying close to the ground in the valley.

We saw several cars parked on the side of the road and thought maybe someone had spotted a wolf.  Instead, they were looking at buffalo...

 

...a huge herd of buffalo.

                                                                                                                                                               

Parts of the herd of buffalo were casually walking beside, across, and on the road. 

This big guy was wallowing around in the dust.

 

After several minutes of waiting for all the buffalo to move off the road, we headed further east and came to where we saw a lot of people with spotting scopes.  We parked and walked over to them and they had spotted a wolf.  One of them was kind enough to let us look through their scope and we were able to see the wolf also.  Unfortunately, the wolf was too quick and too far away for us to get a picture of him.

We drove a little further down the road past this old dormant geyser cone...

 

...where some other cars had been parked.  Some of these people had radio trackers where they could track the wolves with radio collars.  Chuck was asking one of the men about these wolves and looked up on the hillside across the road and saw a wolf walking across a valley between two hills.  By the time, the wolf tracker and I turned around to see the wolf, he had already disappeared behind the next hill.  We were really hoping to get some pictures to share with you but the wolves were very  sneaky and the camera operator (me) just wasn't quick enough.  I did get this picture of a buffalo crossing the road in front of us.

                               

We continued driving through Lamar Valley...

 

and then upwards towards the northeast entrance.

 

When we arrived in Cooke City, we stopped at the Log Cabin Cafe where I could get my morning cup of coffee and we split some french toast and bacon (and used their facilities if you know what I mean).   As we left Cooke City, we descended into a valley with the Absaroka Mountain Range to the west of us and the Beartooth Mountain range to the north and east of us.

We began ascending the Beartooth Mountains and reached an overlook where we could see Pilot Peak (elev. 11,699 ft on the left) and Index Peak (elev. 11,313 ft on the right).

Pilot Peak's shape makes it an easily identifiable mountain peak.

From this overlook, we could see the entire valley below the Absaroka and mountain range. 

These two little prarie dogs watched as we pulled away from the overlook.

 

We began ascending up the Beartooth Mountains...

 

and began noticing very tall markers along the road.  We think these markers are for marking the edges of the road so the snowplows and bulldozers will know where the edge of the road is when clearing the road in the spring.  The Beartooth Highway is closed in the winter.

 

We also saw this waterfall off to the right...

 

...and then Beartooth Lake on the left.

The road continued ascending to another small plateau with little lakes scattered about.

And then we began driving all the switchbacks going up to the top of the Beartooth Pass. 

The higher we climbed, the more snow we saw.

We even saw some bicyclists on the Beartooth Highway.  Can you believe it!

The views just got more amazing-er!

Just when we thought the next curve would be at the top...

 

....we would have to go a little higher...

 

...and a little higher.  Hope there's a road on the other side!  :)

Then, we finally reached the top of Beartooth Pass...

...or so we thought.

We stopped at the "second top", we could now see the Bear's Tooth Peak.

Can you find Bear's Tooth Peak  in this picture? (Double-click the picture to enlarge on your computer.)

The views were even more amazing-er.  (Sorry, but I'm ran out of adjectives to describe how beautiful the mountains and scenery were.)

 

 

 

The flowers are very small and grow very close to the ground at this altitude.

We started back down another switchback...

...and came to another spot where I had to take some more pictures...

when Chuck spotted mountain goats on the mountainside across from us.

They would run across the grass...

...and walk across the snow.

Some of them even laid down in the snow.

Then, we decided to experiment taking pictures using the tri-pod.

We were definitely above the "timberline" here.

Then, it was time to head down all the switchbacks on the other eastern side of Beartooth Pass.

We stopped at another overlook where you could walk out further on a paved trail to the edge of the cliff.

After leaving this overlook, we headed down the mountain on a series of switchbacks like nothing we had ever driven on before.  Below is a little clip of part of the drive.  Warning:  if you get carsick easy, you might want to take some Dramamine before watching!

At the end of Beartooth Highway, is Red Lodge, Montana, which we drove to...

 

...and through and then turned around and headed back.

 

We saw these cool statues of a bear and an elk made from juniper trees as we left Red Lodge.

 

And then we started back up the Beartooth Highway aka "Beartooth Scenic Byway."

We got behind this car going up the mountain that apparently did not have enough trunk room.

 

When we reached the top, we decided to have our picnic lunch across from where we had seen the mountain goats...

and the flock (or herd?) was still there.

After lunch, we practiced a few more times with taking pictures using the tri-pod.

I wanted to take a picture from the rock where we had our picnic but I wasn't quite fast enough the first time.

We brought the tri-pod close and I made it back in time for our picture on our picnic rock this time.

Now can you see Bear's Tooth peak?

On way back down on the other side of Beartooth Pass, we stopped to look at another beautiful waterfall...

According to the only sign around, the name of the falls was "Hazardous Falls".  :)

I had to get one more picture of Pilot's Peak and Index Peak on the way back.

After we were back in Yellowstone along the northeastern side of the upper loop, we saw cars pulled off on the side of the road again where a small bear had been spotted up in a tree. 

 

A little further down the road, even more cars were pulled off the sides of the road as people were taking pictures of two more bears.
 

One of the rangers nearby told us that these were black bears. that the second group of bears was a mama bear and cub, and that the bear we had just seen in the tree had just recently been "kicked out of the den" by its mama.

By the end of the day, we had driven around 250 miles and had been gone just about all day.  Are you tired?  We are!  But wasn't it the most amazing-est?  :)

 

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