Road Trip Day 12-Beartooth & Yellowstone

June 20,2012: we headed south from Billings onto the Beartooth Highway. This is a beautiful mountain road 68 miles long from Red Lodge, MT to Cooke City, WY just by the Northeast gate to Yellowstone. You get as high as 10,947 feet. There are incredible views and the plateaus up there are amazing. We saw lots of snow which the kids wanted to stop and play in, we saw foxes, waterfalls and endless beautiful scenery. After a few hours driving the Beartooth we entered Yellowstone. Right away we saw mountain goat, tons of bison, deer and the most beautiful landscapes I have ever seen. It's so incredible how preserved it is. We drove over to mammoth springs and then made the long trek to our camp site at bridge bay. We tried to reserve a different one but they were all full. On the way to bridge bay we passed they the Hayden valley and at one point there were about 50 people out of their cars looking at something. We quickly saw the grizzly bear across the river. It was very far away but easy to tell what it was. We felt very lucky. We finally got to our campground and it was packed. We were in a far site with woods all around. The bear warning about not having anything at all in your tent or campsite made me so nervous. I did not sleep a wink, between my fear of a bear attack, Molly's coughing, and temperatures in the low 20's we were freezing. Finally at 5am James and I put the heat on in the car, put the kids in, packed up camp hastily and got out of there!