The scenic route

The impetus for our trip to Montana was a family wedding in Billings (Congratulations and thanks, Chris and Becca!) but it worked out better for our overall plan to fly into Great Falls. We arrived there Thursday in the early afternoon. Then, to get closer to Billings, as well as to begin our exploration of Big Sky Country, we drove south to Livingston for the night. (It was one of several enjoyable little towns we encountered out west; I'll tell you about all of them in a later post.)

Since Livingston and Billings are both on I-90, it was an easy drive east Friday, even after a nice short hike (more about this later). We had time to stop in Big Timber (at the Timber Bar) for lunch and were able to watch most of the Netherlands' World Cup dismantling of Spain. (Keeping up with sporting events in the world outside was an important, though subsidiary, activity throughout our trip.) Then on to Billings and the fun weekend of wedding activities.

Since we had to back-track west from Billings to get to Yellowstone* post-wedding, we were very pleased to learn, of an alternative to I-90. Two of our nephews had been to Yellowstone pre-wedding, and they told us about the Beartooth Highway, US 212, a much more scenic and fun way to get there.

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What a great road! Although, as you can probably tell from the map linked above, it's a pretty exciting drive. Here's an example of its extreme switchbacks; the red lines point out sections of the road we'd already traversed (click on any picture to see a larger image):

Henry was up to the challenge, though, in our trusty Rogue (which was not to meet its untimely almost-end until a week later).

In addition to the great scenery, and the interesting feeling of having trouble keeping track of which state you are in (on the left is a boundary sign at the top of Beartooth Pass), we got a type of entertainment we weren't counting on in mid-June—watching skiers!

Not just folks at a regular (well, not exactly regular; you'll see what I mean in a minute) ski area, either. We saw kids (yes, they all looked pretty young) getting ready to, or finishing up, skiing down some of the backcountry snowfields that still covered many of the slopes.

skiers at the top of the pass hiking to their run

Now, we know that people do this. We even have some (young) relatives who have done it. But we'd never really seen it, or thought about the logistics and effort that would be required! The young lady taking off her gear below had just finished coming down the snowfield you can see behind her. As you might notice, it doesn't come all the way down to the parking lot. (That last part must have been fun!) She gave us a quick review of what was involved in getting to the field and negotiating her way down; great fun for her, but it sounded pretty crazy to us!

Here are a couple of friends of skiers (see the red line), waiting at the bottom and taking photos/videos of friends further up that incredibly broad field...true friendship, I guess?

As crazy at these folks are, I must say that they've found an absolutely wonderful place to be crazy in. And they were smart to take advantage of this beautiful Sunday...just a couple of days later we saw signs in

Yellowstone that the highway was closed. There was a light dusting of snow where we were, but in the higher elevations they got enough to close the road. In the middle of June.

I did mention a "regular" ski lift operation. Well, it's somewhat regular, in that it has lifts (2 T-bars). But they're buried during the winter and get dug out in the late spring for summer skiing only! (You can't get there in the winter anyway, as the Highway is always closed all winter.) There's a neat video  on Beartooth Basin's website, with some amazing [i.e., crazy] guys freestyling there as well as gorgeous shots of the scenery.

Here is all we could see of this operation and activity from the road and the parking lot, just the top of the top T-bar:

At the risk of repeating myself, what an amazing, wonderful road! 

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Coming down from the heights, we still had lots of fabulous stuff to see before we found our way to a bar in Gardiner to watch Game 5 of the NBA Finals.

We stopped at this lovely lake; I'm pretty sure it's Beartooth Lake, but wasn't as careful with my note-taking as I should have been. Can you blame me for over-looking such a mundane task amid such scenery?

There was a great waterfall, too, before we even got to Yellowstone. It was also un-noted, but I'm reasonably sure it's Lake Creek Falls...yes, this is a creek. We were there at perhaps the perfect time to see creeks, rivers, and waterfalls at their most impressive. And I will have much more to say on this subject in future posts.

I will need to stop here for now, since the rest of the joys of the day were in Yellowstone and will fill up their own post quite nicely. And at the end of the road in Gardiner, we had even more sweetness awaiting us before bedtime, as our beloved Spurs came through and crushed the Heat for their 5th championship. Joy on all fronts!

Next up: Yellowstone, Part I of many.

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*Here's a map in case the geography of our comings and goings in the Rockies are confusing.