The top of the world as seen from the Beartooth Highway.
Springtime Comes to the pring comes late to this high country. If it’s early June, bring your long underwear. Likely the snow has just been plowed from the Beartooth Highway, the road newly opened from Cooke City, Wyoming, at the Northeast Gate of Yellowstone National Park, to Red Lodge, a small town in southern Montana, a bit west of the Custer National Forest and the Little Big Horn Battlefield memorial.
The Beartooth Highway twists and turns some sixtyeight miles through the Absaroka and Beartooth Mountains, a mile or two above sea level and a billion miles from hustle of city traffic and job deliverables. Thirty-plus years ago, CBS newsman Charles Kuralt, one of America’s most beloved travel journalists, dubbed the Beartooth Highway, “the most beautiful drive in America.” His accolade has been reaffirmed by Beartooth travelers ever since.
Across the Pass, groundwater water is still and fully transparent, revealing both its floor and its reflected walls.
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