Peaks and Plains Trip, Road trip

Scenic Views Everywhere

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Saturday, Sep 16 2023

Road video and map

As I mentioned in the previous post I had little interest in re-visiting the geothermal attractions of Yellowstone. On this occasion it was mainly a convenient and pleasant place to stay but I do love the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and so I spent a little while viewing this spectacular canyon and its waterfalls this morning after my breakfast overlooking Lake Yellowstone.

The lower falls and canyon as seen from Artists Point on the south rim.
The Grand View from the north rim.

You may remember that roads in the northern part of Yellowstone were washed away by floods in June 2022 and there were some delays getting out of the park through the North Eastern Entrance as major repairs are still in progress. Once passed these I quickly came to the Beartooth Scenic Highway which some believe to be the most scenic in the country. I had been looking forward to this drive as a highlight of the trip and, while it was very scenic, it came nowhere near that accolade in my opinion.

I did enjoy driving in perfect weather as the road climbed to nearly 11,000 feet (3,350 m) passing through the Beartooth mountains but, for me, the driving was not as fun and the scenery less impressive than many other roads I have driven. The last 15 miles or so as it descended towards Red Lodge, MT were great but much seemed run of the mill for this part of the country.

Much of the scenery on the Beartooth highway was like this, nice but not stunning.
The highway is an impressive achievement as it passes through alpine tundra and lakes. It was fun to see where I had been from this viewpoint.
At its highest points there were some impressive views of surrounding peaks.

The most scenic part of the actual drive was descending into Rock Creek near the north eastern end of the highway. We have a Rock Creek in Washington D.C but it is not as huge as this. The first photo shows the southwest view from a vista point and the second is looking north east from the same point.

A very enjoyable day but not quite as much as I had hoped for.

8 thoughts on “Scenic Views Everywhere”

  3. Viewing in order, I could have summarised my previous post as “in 2014, I unwisely combined your 2 days into 1”.

    1. I think there was more snow on the Teton glacier and on the Bear Tooth Pass on 31st July 2014. The latter might be random, but the former looks like climate change.

      1. I’m sure the glacier shrinkage is climate change. Beartooth Pass could be just that it’s later in the summer.

    2. I did consider pushing beyond Yellowstone to Cooke City in one day but glad I decided not to since getting out of Yellowstone was a “bear”. Road works, people who blocked the road looking at bison herds as if it was the great wildebeest migration, bison walking slowly along the road reducing traffic to a crawl. It was slow.

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