Wednesday, July 21, 2010

The Beartooth Highway: "The Most Beautiful Drive in America"





That's what Charles Kuralt .... famed Sunday Morning correspondent and story teller ... has said. Gary had previously ridden his motorcycle from south to north, from the northeast entrance to Yellowstone at Cooke City to Red Lodge, but we wanted to do the ride from north to south.

Our original plan had been to drive the motorhome over the pass. But after we camped at the Red Lodge KOA, and had a chance to gather local intelligence, we decided to just do it in the car. It is very steep, with major switch backs, and you run the risk of not being able to stay in your lane, to go over the middle line, on the curves.

So Liz and I indulged in the home cooked breakfast on the KOA back porch, played a little tetherball (I LOVED tetherball at her age!) and then we loaded into Bella. We thought it would probably take about 4 hours to do the approximate 150 miles down US 212 to Wyoming 296, left at Wyoming 120 which turns into Montana 72, and then west for the last 15 miles west on County 3o8 back to Red Lodge. We were right.

The mountains came up gradually as we headed south from Red Lodge, named after the Crow Indian council tepee painted with red clay.


So my plan is to simply download the best of the 100+ pictures I took this morning, and let them do the talking ...... then you can decide for yourself about it being a beautiful drive or not!

We moved toward the mountains gradually, initially seeing beautiful rolling hills.





We think this might be a marmot!














We saw folks walking with their skis in back packs, and then skiing down!







The Most Beautiful Drive in the Country (I think it's an accurate label!) ended and we looped back to Red Lodge. In Bearcreek we saw this sign: World Famous Banana Cream Pie. It was a very effective marketing ploy .... several other people came in because of the sign. None of us demanded proof or evidence of the claim .... we just decided to try the pie and decide for ourselves!! It was pretty darn good! We had hamburgers before the pie, so were all squared away for lunch.

We returned to the Red Lodge KOA, and hooked up Bella. Then we retraced our steps a bit, going south down MT 72 and Wyoming 120 to Cody. Gary had remembered Cody as a great Western town, and we had heard that there was a great western museum ... the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. It really was ..... we'll show you in the next post.

We have only about 10 days left of League's Excellent Adventure. It's ticking down!

Julie, Gary and Liz







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