Saturday 21st (continued)

Bear Tooth Pass

We then started a day of travel through some absolutely beautiful and breathtaking scenery.

We stopped in a little place called Red Lodge for an early lunch – a historic town set up for coal mining.  A very pretty place to wander around.

To get to Yellowstone a lot of people had recommended going via the Bear Tooth Pass.  It closes each year for winter and has only been open for “summer” for 3 weeks. 

We started the day in t-shirts, and as the temperature dropped, and it SNOWED on the car, we put jumpers on, but then took them off because it was warm again.   I’ll put a couple of photos up but will bore you with the rest when we get home because there were so many.

Such a day of contrasts – one minute it was bubbling brooks and streams under snow covered mountains, then sheer rocky bluffs and landslide areas, then frozen lakes and wide open meadows – hard to describe but so very beautiful.  As we got higher and higher into the mountains we were driving through walls of snow which have been plowed recently.  We came across people snow skiing and even saw 2 guys go up a mountain (in the middle of nowhere) on a snow mobile and then one flew down on his snowboard. 

Then there were the animals… today we saw:

-       Bison (everywhere) – right up close!

-       Antelope

-       Deer

-       Chipmunks

-       Eagles

-       And best of all…3 grizzly bears (from the safety of our car).

When we saw the first bear the traffic stopped and a ranger had blocked the road.  People were jumping out to take photos and the ranger said very loudly, “You are too close to the bear for your own safety… Please step back into your Ve-hic-le!  It sounded just like a movie. 

(unfortunately I’m still feeling as dodgy as our car, so did nap quite a bit in the car and when we arrived at Lake Lodge had a 4 hour sleep while everyone else had dinner and explored).  Apparently dinner was delicious – Alice ordered Macaroni and cheese, which was the grand total of $1 and was declared “absolutely disgusting” (surprise). Joseph’s fried chicken was so enormous there was enough to share around for Alice too!