Driving the Beartooth Highway (US-212, 3,337m Summit) & Chief Joseph Scenic Byway

When you finish your morning wildlife safari through Lamar Valley and reach the tiny log-cabin mining towns of Silver Gate and Cooke City at Yellowstone's Northeast Entrance, do not turn around right away. Starting right outside the gate is US Highway 212, the 109-kilometre (68-mile) Beartooth Highway to Red Lodge, Montana, famously crowned by CBS correspondent Charles Kuralt as 'the most beautiful drive in America'.

1. What Makes the Beartooth Highway So Extraordinary? (Open Late May to Mid-October Only)

Completed in 1936 as an engineering marvel, the Beartooth Highway climbs out of the pine forests into the largest contiguous expanse of high-alpine tundra above 3,000 metres (10,000 feet) in the United States, surrounded by 20 peaks exceeding 3,650 metres (12,000 feet) and hundreds of sapphire glacial lakes:

• Pilot & Index Overlook and Beartooth Lake: twenty minutes outside the Northeast Gate, stop to photograph the dramatic, Matterhorn-like volcanic spire of Pilot Peak (3,569m) and mirror-calm Beartooth Lake.
• The 'Top of the World Store' & Beartooth Pass Summit (3,337 Metres / 10,947 Feet): climb across the treeless alpine roof of the continent, where 3-to-5-metre snowbanks line the highway right into July and summer skiers ride a portable Poma lift at Beartooth Basin in June, to the 3,337-metre summit.
• Rock Creek Vista Point (2,790m, Before Descending the Hairpin Switchbacks into Red Lodge): walk out onto a paved, cantilevered cliff-edge boardwalk looking straight down 1,000 vertical metres into the U-shaped glacial valley of Rock Creek and the dramatic switchbacks descending into historic Red Lodge, Montana.

2. The 3-Hour Half-Day Loop: Combine with 'Chief Joseph Scenic Byway'

If you are staying in Yellowstone or Cody, drive the Beartooth Highway up to the 3,337m summit and back to the junction of Wyoming Highway 296 (the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway), which winds south over 2,459-metre Dead Indian Summit Overlook (looking straight back at the entire Absaroka Mountain wall) and across the dizzying Sunlight Creek Bridge into Cody.