Stretching 68 miles across the borders of Montana and Wyoming, the Beartooth Highway climbs to an elevation of nearly 11,000 feet through a series of switchbacks that start out in the forest and climb up into the alpine zone. To say this is a scenic drive might be a bit of an understatement.
Due to the elevation, there is a relatively narrow window of time each year when you can drive the Beartooth. It typically opens around Memorial Day after a plowing operation clears the way, and closes for the season by mid-October as winter closes it back up.
July seemed about right, so off we went.
We seemed to be the only ones that weren’t feeding the wildlife at Rock Creek Vista. This guy didn’t seem too happy with me.
The lady next to me asked nobody in particular, “I wonder if they like ranch flavored seeds?”, and I replied silently, “The question should be, I wonder if I should be feeding the wildlife”, with the obvious answer being, “no”. Oh well, a few extra portly rodents won’t cause much harm. Maybe the Montana Department of Tourism brings them in each summer to keep the tourons entertained.
Up the road we went, and soon we leveled off on the plateau near the summit of the Beartooth, where we ran across a sizeable herd of mountain goats.
A few more curves up the road, sure enough, we got to watch a bear on the Beartooth.
And we spotted the namesake Beartooth Mountain (the sharp pointy one).
Alpine Lakes started to appear.
Then we summited out and it was all downhill from there.
I thought we would find a semi-secluded spot at one of those alpine lakes. We bounced our way along a road on our way to a prospective site, until the road turned into more of a trail and we turned around. I don’t think we were missing much, because we soon realized how thick the mosquitoes were in the high country. We found another spot, and even leveled up the truck, but it didn’t take being outside for long to convince us that this wasn’t the spot we wanted to spend the afternoon after all.
We enjoyed lunch with a view as we tried to kill the swarm that infiltrated the truck and moved on.
We headed for a lower elevation that had a few less bugs and found a spot to spend the night. We weren’t too far from our destination for tomorrow, Yellowstone.
