Day 17 – Canyon Campground, Yellowstone Park through the Beartooth Scenic By-way to Billings, MT

Day 17 – Canyon Campground, Yellowstone Park through the Beartooth Scenic By-way to Billings, MT

August 13, 2013

Here is the view from our stop for road work in the Beartooth Valley just northeast of the northeast entrance, or in our case, exit from Yellowstone.

We left our campsite at Canyon Campground in Yellowstone Park this morning

and stopped at the large and too-commercial Canyon Valley center of shops and visitor center. It is one of the newer centers in the Park and it handles large crowds. We purchased a toy replica of the historic yellow Yellowstone buses (to complement the red bus we purchased in Glacier),

some hats, t-shirts and ice and were on our way. We have two reservations tonight; another night at Canyon or Buffalo Bill State Park in Cody, WY. We’ve decided to head towards Cody.

Our first stop was the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. It is spectacular. We stayed on the north rim and the pull-outs along the separate one-way loop road include three inspiring vistas.  The first was of the falls of the Yellowstone River. It falls over 300 feet into the canyon.

The canyon itself is about 1400 feet deep, 24 miles long, and 2400 feet across. Here the “yellow stone” for which the park was named is more clearly visible. The Yellowstone River continues from the falls in a fast paced rush of white and deep green water. We enjoyed every walk and view of this area.

The boys were so excited about their new Yellowstone hats that even Ted was willing to pose for pictures.

At one point as we were looking back towards the river and falls, an osprey glided past us and into the canyon.

A storm blew up on our last vista stop, so we decided to stay for a quick lunch in our RV in the rain. Everyone is still enjoying lunches of random sandwiches with a variety of luncheon meats, left-over meats from dinners, and, of course, PB and J. Alle and Ricardo had PB and B or with banana. We still have about 20 pounds of the about 30 pounds of salt water taffy I brought along from home, so it was salt water taffy all around for dessert.

After lunch, we headed through Lamar Valley to the northeast corner of Yellowstone Park. It is known for wildlife sightings. Ricardo had heard wolves in this area last night, but we spotted mainly bison herds.  After exiting the park, we headed north to see the Beartooth Range and valley. It is a 65 mile rambling scenic route, winding into Montana and back to Wyoming.  The Beartooth Highway is a National "By-way" and has been called America's Most Beautiful Drive by Charles Kuralt. Parts of it were more breathtaking than the Going to the Sun Road in Glacier.

From here we planned to head south again to Cody, WY.  Instead, we spent so much time on the winding mountain roads of Beartooth, driving at over 10K feet, mostly above the tree line and through lingering snow,

we stopped for dinner in Red Lodge, MT and decided to stay the night near-by, outside of Billings, MT.

We are now officially on our way home –  to Devil's Tower, WY, Custer State Park in South Dakota and into Iowa over the next four days.