Holy crap, Marie

Lets start with Friday and Saturday.  I already mentioned that the Utes were here for the week (University of Utah) and bought out the resort.  However, they were gone mostly during the days so lunches would have been a minimum EXCEPT for the fact that we had both days scheduled for a bunch of quaders for an event called Rally in the Pines.

We had 20 very muddy quad riders for lunches both days.  Really a mess!

The good news is that all the cabins were vacated today (Sunday) and guess what?  We are on our days off. Cleaning cabins is my LEAST favorite thing to do.  So, YEA!

We left this am at 7:00 to get an early start on our weekend trip.  The roads out of Elk Lake were awful due to considerable rain we have had the past 4 days...poor Utes.  We drove into West Yellowstone and filled up with gas and bought the car wash option because the Honda was a mess.  Headed through the park and out the Northeast entrance on our way to the Beartooth Highway Mountain Pass.

Charles Kuralt in his "On the Road" series called this road the most beautiful drive in America.  Having just finished the 64 mile drive, I cannot argue with the man.  It is incredible.  

You start by going through the Lemar Valley of Yellowstone. We have been through the park about 6 times and have never been to this corner.  We saw hundreds of Bison and numerous elk.  Apparently when there is a carcass along the river you will also see wolves and Grizzlies.

Part of a large herd of bison.

Not the best picture, but the light brown calf is nursing.

By the way, these are bison (species: bison bison) not buffalo. Apparently when the first Anglo hunters came to the region, most of them were from Europe and thought the large beasts resembled the waterbuffalo they  had seen in parts of Europe and Africa. Therefore erroneously called them buffalo. Not related at all.

From the Lemar Valley, you continue up the Soda Butte Creek river canyon and start to climb and climb. As we continued to climb past 8,000 feet, we realized that this inclement weather we had been experiencing was going to become something we had never seen in August...snow.

This is where we are heading.

Even with a fairly low cloud cover, the drive is amazing.  Beautiful waterfalls:

At one point we drove up to a fire lookout tower which was at 9,300 feet, above the tree line and experiencing its first snowfall of the season.

Beautiful wildflowers on the way to the fire tower.

Wildflowers and snow...

Top of the treeline.

Here are some other nice pictures.

Lake Beartooth. Snow on the side slope.

Looking down to the road where we are heading.

Looking down to a river in the canyon.

At the top of the pass we were at 10,965 feet.  And in a total whiteout, hence no useable pictures.  A bit of a white knuckle drive considering it was mostly hair turns at 20mph with thousands of feet drops on one side or the other.  Truly breathtaking.

We ended up at Red Lodge, Mt where we have a reservation at a nice little pet friendly motel.  And yes, Zoe made the entire trip with us.  And did very well. Tonight we are told that there are Pig races at a local watering hole.  Stay tuned for the next blog entry.

Final gift: at one of the vista points on the pass, some college kids were returning from a softball game and had some sunflower seeds to entice the local chipmunks.  The 'munks look like they have had plenty of sunflower seeds in their past..