Geyser Girl and the Beartooth Highway

We left Saturday afternoon to visit Yellowstone NP and exit it's NE Entrance across the Beartooth Highway.  We spent the first night in Three Forks, MT, which is about 160 miles south of Choteau and where Louis and Clark came through while exploring the headwaters for the Missouri River.







Sunday morning, we headed south toward the west entrance of Yellowstone on route 287, taking us through the Madison Valley, which is spectacular.








 Toward the end of that valley is the site of a significant earthquake which struck near a recreation lake in August 1959.  More than 25 people were killed, mostly campers, when the side of the mountain came tumbling down on them.  There is a visitors center located at the head of a new lake that was created when the Madison River was dammed by the slide.  The other lake near there was tilted 19 feet to one side creating new beachfront property on one side, and covering cabins on the other side.  It was an interesting lead-in to West Yellowstone.








Since our goal on this trip was to drive the Beartooth Highway, we planned to spend a brief time in Yellowstone and go out the NE entrance and stay in Cooke City for the night.  So we planned our path through Yellowstone and decided the main thing we wanted to see was the Norris Geyser Basin, which has a lot of colorful features and many geysers, fumaroles, and mudpots.  It was there that I discovered Beth is Geyser Girl - she really thinks they are cool, loves the sulfur smell (thinks it therapeutic), and I practically had to drag her out of there.

It was about 5:00 PM when we headed out the NE entrance where we encountered a road sign blinking "road closed in 8 miles".  Since Cooke City, and the motel we had reservations for (good to have reservations in the remoteness of Yellowstone), are 21 miles away, we knew we were screwed.  No explanation why we weren't informed by Park Rangers or some signs in Yellowstone.  It would be over 200 miles to go out the other entrance and come to Cooke City, so we headed across to the NW entrance and drove 50+ miles up route 89 to Livingston, MT.  There, we did find a motel and had a very good brew and meal at Neptune's Brewery, a place we'd like to visit again.

After debating whether to head on back to Choteau today (Monday), we decided that since the purpose of the trip was to drive the Beartooth Highway, we would head on east on I-90 and go in through Red Lodge, MT and across the Beartooth to Cooke City today.  Which is what we did.  The drive was spectacular, rising to over 10,000 feet at the top and then decending to about 8,000 in Cooke City.  We're in the middle of the two block town for the evening.

After getting supper at the Beartooth Cafe, we drove the 13 miles down into the Lamar Valley of Yellowstone to where the road is closed.  This area is famous for the wildlife, and we did see a small grizzly, a big black bear, antelope, deer (of course), elk, buffalo, and several ground squirrels.

More updates need to be made, but that will sort of catch you up for this trip.  And neither of us are going to whine about our colds and Beth's ear problems with the elevation changes.