The Most Scenic Way to Access Yellowstone National Park Is Called the ‘Most Beautiful Roadway in America’

Stunning drives abound within the U.S., but it surely’s uncommon to discover a route that makes you’re feeling as if you’re driving within the Alps in one other period—with fixed mountain views, tight switchbacks, and an open highway. It’s even rarer to discover a drive that takes you deep sufficient into the wilderness which you can spot massive, wild animals, together with moose and grizzly bears, from the protection of your automobile.

Meet Montana’s Beartooth Freeway (U.S. 212), an nearly 69-mile stretch of freeway that connects the mountain city of Crimson Lodge, Montana, with Yellowstone Nationwide Park. Sure, the route is as lovely as you’ve heard, garnering nicknames just like the “Freeway to the Sky” and “The Most Stunning Roadway in America.” 

The highway, which opens when the snow has melted sufficient to be plowed and closes when the snow returns, is usually drivable from Memorial Day to mid-October. This 12 months, it opened in the long run of Could.

Whereas the freeway may be sensitive within the early season, with frequent closures as a consequence of climate, it’s nonetheless what many individuals name a drive that everybody ought to do a minimum of as soon as—and simply essentially the most beautiful solution to entry Yellowstone Nationwide Park. Beartooth Freeway results in the park’s Northeast Entrance, which sits close to the Montana-Wyoming border and is thought for its wildlife. 

Vacationers who aren’t occupied with visiting the park can both flip round at Beartooth Go Summit, which sits at 10,947 toes above sea stage or proceed over the go to the cities of Cooke Metropolis or Silver Gate, Montana. The Northeast Entrance is simply over one mile past the city of Silver Gate.

A good way to expertise Beartooth is to include it with Montana’s Nice Large Open, a sequence of highway journeys that information vacationers by means of three distinct Montana landscapes. The routes embody a three-day journey by means of the Beartooth Mountains (together with the Beartooth Freeway) and an eight-day, 1,319-mile highway journey by means of the state’s most putting landscapes, which incorporates, in fact, a jaunt on Beartooth.

It’s best to by no means try a drive on the Beartooth Freeway with out first checking the standing of the highway and incoming climate. The Montana Division of Transportation is answerable for the freeway to the Montana-Wyoming border, whereas the Nationwide Park Service is in control of highway upkeep from the highway’s first border crossing and into Yellowstone Nationwide Park.