Saturday was another fantastic ride through the mountains.  We started out in Yellowstone National Park headed for the Beartooth Scenic Highway.  Beartooth is listed in many tour guides as the number one scenic highway in the country.  We have been on many scenic highways on our travels and I will agree this was one of the best.  On our way to Beartooth we traveled through a part of Yellowstone that we had not covered yet.  We had been told that the best place to view the bison was in Lamar Valley on the northeast side of the park.  Well, we weren't disappointed.

Not long after we left the visitor center area we came upon our first close encounter of our trip.  There were four bison taking a stroll down the road.  Behind the big one in the center of the road there are two more, a grown adult and one young calf.  Sharon was so excited.  She wanted to get out and pet them.  Not a good idea.  The Park Ranger vehicle in the background had turned on his loud speaker making some kind of clicking sound that made the bison move out of the way.  When they did, this big one came within arms length from my side of the car.

We were really excited when we saw this small herd.  We had not seen more than a three or four together before this.  There were about eight in this small herd.

Just passed the small herd of bison we spotted our first antelope.  These three were on the side of the road.  Aren't they beautiful.

Sharon and I were saying that it would be great to see a large herd of bison, not just a few at one time.  Within seconds of saying that we rounded a curve and entered Lamar Valley.  There was the large herd.  There were so many bison I had to use Sharon's fingers and toes to start counting them.  The valley is at least a mile long, and the bison herd went from one end to the other.  The pictures below only shows a small part of the herd, but all the way from one end to the other looked just like that.  I understand that there are at least a thousand in the herd we saw, and probably more.

We stopped at one of the many picnic areas along the park road for lunch.  Nice to take a break and refresh ourselves.

We left the park and started our way onto the Beartooth Scenic Highway.  As we left the little town of Silver Gate, just outside of Yellowstone, we started seeing the mountains again.  We had not seen this side of the mountains, and were we surprised.  Beautiful.  (I like using that word, but it is not enough.)

When we saw this sign for the store we thought we had reached the top of the mountain, no, that is just what they wanted us to think.  We still had plenty of mountain to climb.

As you can see in the picture below, there were a lot of motorcycles on the road.  We found out later that there was a bike rally going on in Red Lodge, Montana, just at the bottom of the mountain on the other side from where we started.

Lot's of pretty wild flowers to see.  These were at an elevation of 11,000 feet and growing out of the permafrost.  We met a group of students from Wisconsin, and their professor, that were studying the permafrost area.

We saw lots of snow at the higher elevations.

I was above this little bit of snow on this cliff.  I thought about trying to get out to it, but thought better of it.  When we got around the next curve I could look back to where I was standing, the snow was just hanging on to the cliff, then a straight drop to the valley below.  Long way to go for a snow ball.

Snow and white puffy clouds.  Almost look alike.

Some more of those pretty flowers.

This is the valley below where I was thinking about getting the snow.  Waaaaay down there.

These were growing out of the gravel along the walkway at a rest stop.  The rest stop is just prior to going down the mountain.

I know some of you have noticed the date and time on some of the pictures.  I bought this camera to have one in the car at all times.  Just haven't learned how to set the time and date on it yet.

We went into Red Lodge after leaving Beartooth.  There we ran into a few bikers.  We walked around town for a little bit, found an ice cream shop, then head back to Gardiner.

Here's a few of the bikes parked along the streets of Red Lodge.  This part of town is about four blocks long, and bikes were parked on both sides the complete length.  It was really neat.

We elected to take the road on north and pick up the interstate back west, then down to Gardiner.  Not much to see on the interstate. 

The day was just perfect with getting to see the bison herd and more of the mountains.  Hope you enjoyed the ride.  It would have been great having you with us, but you may not have liked riding in the back seat.  Very curvy roads.

We are leaving Yellowstone today and headed for Cody, Wyoming.  So I will be back later to tell you about our next adventure.  Enjoy the ride, and remember,

God Loves You

Gary