Get Penguined

I’ll start this series of Yellowstone posts with our 0th day–the day of travel.  We first arrived in Billings, MT by airplane.  From there, we drove over many miles of flat, boring terrain.  We finally found the foot of a mountain range about 60 miles out of Billings near a city called Red Lodge, which would be the last we would see of anything that could be called a city until we left Silver Gate 6 days later.

Outside of Red Lodge we began probably one of the most beautiful drives in the United States, Beartooth Pass.  Certainly the most beautiful section of road I have ever been on.  I am ashamed to say that I didn’t take any photos of this part of the journey, but I believe that it would have been impossible for any but the best photographers to truly capture the magnitude and beautiy of the views from our car.

Once we got to the top of the mountain range, the terrain was actually very flat, and even though it was August 1st, there were several patches of snow on the ground.  Since we only get about half an inch of snow in Alabama each year, of course we got out to play in it.  We couldn’t play for long, though, because we had a lot more ground to cover and night was fast approaching.

The next so called “city” we passed through after getting off the Beartooth Pass was Cooke City.  When I heard the name, I was expecting a fairly small town, but a town nonetheless.  Cooke City far exceeded my expectations though.  It turns out that Cooke City consists of the highway that runs through town and about 15-20 homes (a generous estimate).  However, once we reached our destination a few miles down the road in Silver Gate, Cooke City did indeed seem like a large city.  We finally arrived at our destination, the Grizzly Lodge, well after dark.

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