Red Lodge MT

Our planned trip to Red Lodge, MT, started at 11 AM by picking up Karen and George at their rig and traveling to Powell, WY, for a Chinese Buffet. It was excellent, and we will revisit this restaurant before leaving in October.

The trip to Red Lodge was planned with an eastern route to get there, and traveling the Beartooth Highway and Chief Joseph Scenic Highway for the return trip. We arrived in Red Lodge at around 2 PM and enjoyed this small town - population of around 3,000, for nearly 3 hours. The weather turned sour just as we arrived, so some of our pictures were taken with an overcast and dreary sky. It was a quaint little town with nice little shops and flower baskets hanging all up and down the street along the curb and outside the businesses:

With the rain starting to come down and the time flying by, we left the town after 5 PM to head to the Beartooth Highway. The road is probably 50 miles in length and is full of switchbacks that climb to an elevation of almost 11,000 feet with spectacular views along the way. There were several areas where you could pull off the road to enjoy the views. We stopped at this one, about halfway to the top, and took the following photos:

We kept traveling along the switchback roads that, in some places, only had a guardrail between you and a thousand feet or so drop off the side. Josie was stressed to the point of wanting to sleep through the rest of the drive on this road in order to avoid looking at the straight down dropoffs. It was a good thing I was driving and had to keep my eyes glued to the road, or I would have felt the same way. It was definetely the scariest drive we have taken in a long time. At the same time, it was the most beautiful drive.

We reached an area near the top of the pass and walked along a path (paved, and with stone walls about 2 feet high, with railings on top) that provided views all over the valley. We took pictures for a group of girls and they reciprocated by taking a picture of the four of us:

In the same area, which was close to 10,000 feet in elevation, there were chipmunks all over the place looking for handouts. These chipmunks were so tame they would walk right up to you, stand on your shoes, and look up at you as though to ask for food:

We kept driving - up - and finally reached the summit of the pass which was at an elevation of 10,947 feet:

We were so high, that we were above the snow line - in the middle of August. In fact, what we were getting as rain at the lower elevations, was snow at the top. We saw one vehicle that had run off the road earlier in the day, so we were thankful that we were here later in the day. The overcast sky undoubtedly restricted our photo shooting of some of these spectacular vistas:

Our trip down eventually connected with the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway that we previously took when we went to Yellowstone through the Northeastern entrance. The following is a picture taken from the top of the pass on that beautiful highway:

Our drive was just spectacular the whole way back from Red Lodge. We saw several deer along the way and we even spotted this moose, which was the first one we've seen since we arrived here:

The rain continued off and on the whole way home, and we finished with this photo of the rainbow that followed us most of the way down the mountains:

It was another wonderful day with good friends in this beautiful part of the country. We arrived home at about 8:30 PM and watched a little TV before turning in for the day.

Today will be a stay at home day. There are a couple small projects that need to be done at home and the skies are overcast again this morning. It will be a good day to just relax...