Beartooth Highway

Greetings from Red Lodge, Montana, the beginning of the Beartooth Highway, a 68 mile road from Red Lodge to Yellowstone.  It is a curvy, mountain road that at its highest point is 10, 947 feet.  The temperature change from the start of the highway to the highest point decreased 30 degrees and with the wind I would say 40 degrees.

Dave was happy to share this picture with his friend in the heat of Florida, so I figured I would share here as well to try and cool off all of you experiencing the heatwave. 

There were several pull offs along the way with beautiful views.

We came across this brave biker.  Brave for 2 reasons, 1) to ride that incline, 2) to ride on such a curvy road with no real shoulders as cars go by.  

At a couple of stops we got to see Marmots.  If you got too close they started chirping to let you know they were aware you were there and you better back off.  

At one of the stops we saw a bunch of chipmunks.  This was at the Vista Point rest area.  You can tell that people feed them all the time because I had a couple run towards me and go up on their hind legs.  I saw a couple people feed them and they came right up and took it out of their hands.  Dave caught these two “kissing”.

There were several stops that I could go and explore and climb.  I like the puzzle of finding the way up and traversing the rocks.  

I took a couple panoramic pictures to try to give a different perspective.  

For what I might consider a harsh environment (windy, 51 degrees in July at the high point) there were some beautiful flowers.

This was probably my favorite view today, which was 8 alpine lakes in one view.

A couple of road facts:

Charles Kuralt, On the Road Correspondent, dubbed this the most beautiful roadway in America.   

The highway was completed in 1936. 

Things you see along the roadway are lush lodge pole pines, alpine tundra, glacial cirques, alpine lakes (there are 950 of them) and tundra flowers.  

The first documented passage over the beartooth mountains was in 1881.

It says it takes about 2 hours to go the 68 miles.  We went 30 and turned around and we enjoyed all it had to offer for about 5 hours.