Road Trip Day Four: Beartooth Highway, Yellowstone

I picked Miles City as our layover city because it is the town where Gus died in Lonesome Dove, so we couldn’t leave town before stopping by the Olive Hotel to take a picture. We made another stop at Walmart and then headed toward Yellowstone. We stopped in Billings to fill up with gas and picked up sandwiches at Arby’s (mmm . . . Arby’s).


We took Beartooth Highway to get into the park. The road starts up from Red Lodge, MT and takes you to Cooke City (near the northeast entrance of Yellowstone). The elevation at the top is almost 11,000 feet. It was quite the climb and offered amazing views. The kids kept an eye on the temperature display in the van as we made our way up the mountain. It dropped a full 20 degrees (from 58 to 38) by the time we got to the top. We got out part way up and the kids had fun throwing rocks over the side and trying to hit a big patch of snow down below. As we got higher up, there were big walls of snow (12-15 feet high) on either side of the road. At one point the wind started blowing and it was like we were driving through a blizzard with all of the snow blowing in from the sides. They have a ski lift at the top that is only open in June in July so people can ski in the summer. I was surprised by how flat the tops of the mountains were. Elise got a little surprise of her own when she flipped up the straw on her water bottle to get a drink. The lower air pressure created a major water fountain that shot out the top and got her wet. It was a good opportunity to give the kids a little science lesson about air pressure. :)





We had a great first day in Yellowstone. We saw a momma moose with her baby, lots of buffalo and their calves (even a couple of nursing calves), antelope, ravens, and a badger. We just missed a wolf chasing an antelope which was quite exciting according to the people who got there before us. The main attraction of the day was the waterfalls. We saw lots of mini waterfalls as we came into the park and stopped by Tower Falls on our way south. In a funny coincidence, we found a hubcap on the side of the road as we were leaving Tower Falls. We had lost one somewhere in Wyoming, so my quality husband picked up the one on the side of the road and popped it on the van.






We spend most of the rest of the day at the upper and lower falls of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. We unwittingly took the hike of death (aka Uncle Tom’s Trail) down to the lower falls. It didn’t look far on our map. Turns out the map just showed the horizontal distance from the parking lot, not the vertical distance down to the falls. It was a 500 foot drop with lots of little switch backs (many of which were still covered with snow) and more than 300 stairs. There was an awesome view at the bottom, but the hike back up just about kicked our butts. Nate did it one and half times because he ran ahead to see if it was worth it and then back up to help the kids make their way down. I laughed when we got to the top and read the sign at the trailhead . . . mostly the words “very strenuous.” That would have been good to know before we started. Road trip lesson of the day: Read the signs.



After the hike we headed to our hotel in West Yellowstone. It is an expensive town. We paid $30 more for one night there than we did for both nights in Custer. My plans of relaxing in front of the TV were thrown out the window when we realized that they only had seven channels to choose from. What hotel doesn’t have TLC?!? It’s an abomination. We did catch a couple of episodes of Man vs. Food on the travel channel. That kept the kids entertained. We were wise to get a room with a kitchen. Even the food in West Yellowstone was pricey. We went to McDonald’s to pick up a few cheeseburgers and everything on the menu was at least twice as much as normal. Crazy.

Road trip lesson of the day #2: Check the heat level of the hotel blow dryer before using it to inflate your air mattress. Vinyl melts.