Yesterday we woke up early and made our way to the Beartooth Highway for some spectacular scenery. The best part of the day came early– we were driving on Trail Creek Road and a black bear crossed the street right in front of us. He was too quick for the cameras, but we were the only ones there to see him–pretty cool. On the way to the highway we drove through Yellowstone and were treated with a grizzly bear sighting (don’t worry, he was plenty far away). That was pretty much the only big wild life we saw all day, which is kind of amazing since usually you see lots of other things but never bears.  Anyway–on to some shots of the scenery along the highway.

Here I am about to jump off a cliff. Not really, but I was pretty close to the edge.

And here’s an overview of part of the road (now you know what they mean when they say hairpin turns! Check out a scarier example of the road here.).  The Beartooth Highway was built in 1936 and has the highest elevation in Wyoming and Montana, if you couldn’t tell by the photos. Luckily for me Paul has lots of experience doing all of the mountain driving. Generally I sit in the passenger seat and try not to look over the edge. In the above photo, you can also see a HUGE plume of smoke, which was coming from the Gunbarrel forest fire (it’s burning through about 41,000 acres of Wyoming, but they are letting it burn to try to promote new growth in the area). The smoke cloud got amazingly large as we kept driving. There was plenty of pretty scenery to be had, you can check out more of my photos of the highway and Red Lodge (the town on the other side) right here.

It was a loooong day but I love these kind of trips–I keep seeing things even when I close my eyes to go to sleep because my brain can’t process them all. We really are fortunate to live in such a pretty state– I want to take full advantage of the rest of summer while it’s still here. 

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Anyway–in craft-related news, I just wanted to remind you: there is still time to enter to win a free copy of Kayte Terry’s new book, so head on over and comment (on that post) if you haven’t already. Good luck!