Day 34: The Great Great Grandaddy of all Scenic Routes

Tuesday
We have been trying to recover our energy over the last few days so that we could 'do' one of the great scenic drives, actually two scenic drives which run into each other. The First is the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway and the second is State Highway 212, known as the Bear Tooth Highway which is an All American Road and includes the Bear Tooth Pass. From our campground that would be a drive of nearly 200 miles, though the actual scenic routes are about about 45 miles each.
The weather was beautiful, sunny and warm with very little wind. We arrived at the Chief Joseph road quite quickly and then cruised as gently as possible over the winding roads. It is very difficult to describe the variety of views that we had, but at every turn (and there were a lot of them) a new vista would open up, a sense of expectancy of the next view as we approached each crest in the road. At times we could look down on countryside as though we were in a plane rather than a car,

As we passed over the Bear Tooth Pass we were looking down on other mountain tops, quite strange really.
We tried to stop at every vantage point, but there were so many that one became almost immune to them.

We finally pulled into Red Lodge on the far end of the highways, found a cafe and had a drink before driving back to our trailer. As usual we find that our photographs do not in any way do justice to the scenery, but they are an aide memoir for us to remember a wonderful day.
N.B.On driving through the Chief Joseph Byway we found a bit more of the Nez Perce Puzzle, probably our last contact with them. The tribe, now about 600 people, had been eluding the army chasing them from the west by passing through Yellowstone, however an army from the East was closing in on them, so they used the Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone River to pass between the two armies and escaped to the north, eluding capture yet again.