Is This REALLY the Most Beautiful Road in America?? (SUV Camping/Vanlife Adventures)

Well, we have a problem. It is a hazy day today. There are several layers of mountains that you should be able to see behind me. You can kind of see the outline of of these ones. Not super defined though. And that's a problem because the whole point of this drive that I'm about to do is kind of to to have nice views and to see the mountains. So that's a problem. This haze is the smoke from wildfires. I presume the ones in California. Although could be some that are closer at hand. I know there are there are wildfires in this general area. I'm on a five-day trip. Today's day two. I didn't film yesterday. I just drove here. Took me about five hours to get here yesterday. And this trip will be a five-day trip focused on western Wyoming. Kind of northern, northwestern Wyoming. I'm going to visit three mountain ranges. I'm in the first mountain range now. These are the Beartooth Mountains. I camped here last night. I'm camped just above the Beartooth Highway. It's over here. This is the road down there. That's the Beartooth Highway. This road is supposed to be one of the best drives in America. I've seen it called the best drive in America because it's so scenic. I'm toward the west end of it. Toward the western start of it. It goes up and over and through the mountains over this way. It's supposed to be really really pretty. But again because of the haze I don't know exactly how much of that will come through today. It'll still be pretty. We'll still be able to see some pretty lakes and mountains closer at hand. But for the the far off distance sweeping majestic views I think we're going to be robbed of those on this trip. So I'm going to have to do this again in a year or two when I mean hopefully at some point the air will be cleaner. It was actually clearer last night. It was still hazy last night when I got here to camp. But I could see like there's one mountain in particular over over this way that was really really neat. Really cool. It's a really pointy mountain and I chose this spot because of the views of that pointy mountain and the mountains around it. And I'll put a picture of the the view from this campsite last night. Again it's just a little bit clearer. But like I said this is a five-day trip. Should be three SUV RVing videos worth of content for you guys. Again in three Wyoming mountain ranges. I'm in Wyoming right now. This road crosses into Montana and it finishes up in the town of Red Lodge, Montana. I'm not going to be spending a lot of time in Montana though. Once I get there I'm basically gonna turn back and come back into Wyoming. I'm excited. Should be a really fun trip. Let's hit the road. Let's hit the Beartooth Highway. Let's see what we can find. See what we can see up here. Should be a good day. First stop of the day is basically right below where I camped. It's a waterfall. I could hear these waterfalls from where I camped. Looks like there's an old bridge here we can stand on and look down onto the waterfall. I think there's a waterfall just below it over here. Here we go. That's a chasm if I've ever seen one. What a gorgeous little creek. What a gorgeous spot. Then looking downstream, that's the bridge. This bridge out here is the road, is the Beartooth Highway. And here's the creek going down. This creek is called Lake Creek so I think this is just called Lake Creek Falls. Not entirely sure. Now this is where things get a little bit tricky because I planned on stopping at a couple different viewpoints along the road here in the immediate future as I drive higher up this road. But again with this, with these conditions, with this haze, I don't know if it really makes sense to do that. So what I think I'm going to do is drive higher up along this road to the point where it's kind of above tree line and I'll stop there and I'll fly the drone. Get some, try to get some drone footage of the immediate area because again it's hazy so the far off stuff we won't be able to get a shot of. But I'm going to do that. And then also there's another waterfall up here that I wanted to see but there's construction along the road there and so you just got to roll with the punches, right? Like these things happen when you're traveling. You just got to make the most of the time and opportunities you do have. So I'm going to get back in the car. I'm going to drive up the road. I'm going to wait 20 minutes in some road construction. There's a one lane right up there and each side has to wait about 20 minutes before they can go. So I'll do that. I'll get up to a beautiful high point and then hopefully I'll be able to fly the drone up there. Well what a gorgeous spot. What a gorgeous road. This lake's called Little Bear Lake and this area is known for its lakes. So if you look at a map of this area, like I'm surrounded by lakes here. I've got this one here. I've got a few over here. More over this way. Several back down the road. There are just lakes everywhere along here. There are lots of lakes you can drive right to. Lots of lakes you could hike to. You could spend weeks up here. You could spend an entire summer up here just going to different lakes, fishing, boating, hiking, paddle boarding, kayaking, whatever you want to do. Some of these lakes allow motors. Like the ones you can drive to have motorized boat access. Others don't. So whatever you're interested in, you can probably find it here. And we're not quite above tree line but we're getting there. Like you can see trees over on this mountain site here. But this is kind of a high tundra where I am right now. Really beautiful area. Decent views. Again, if it weren't hazy there would be great views off this way and back that way. Earlier on in the drive, toward the start of the drive, you have views into Yellowstone over there. This area is very close to the northeast corner to Yellowstone. Northeast entrance of Yellowstone. And I am in the RAV4, by the way, for this trip. The Yukon is getting some work done to it. And also for a trip like this that is relatively short, relatively high mileage, it kind of makes sense to take the more fuel efficient vehicle. And you'll be happy to know that as of a few days ago I have a new chip in my windshield. I don't know if you can really see that. So that's great. I'd like to get this fixed like today or tomorrow if I can so it doesn't spread into a crack all the way across the windshield like my last several rock chips have. But I mean it's already starting to crack a little bit off to the right there. I don't know if you can see that. But it's already starting to happen. Might be too late. I'm not sure. And because this area does have so many easily accessible, beautiful, high elevation lakes, let's go visit a couple more. I think I'm gonna backtrack a little bit to visit two more lakes. And the first one is called Island Lake. So I drove a few miles up the road to Island Lake and I met a subscriber, met a viewer. This is Mike. He's in... how long are you in the area for? Looking to be about a week. I was just driving into the parking lot here and he's like, hey I watch your videos. Are you a YouTuber? Something like that. And yeah, it's great to talk to Mike and talk about where he's been, where he's going. What's your favorite thing you've seen on this trip so far? Just being in the high elevations and the cool air and the trees are very healthy. That is true. That is one thing I hadn't hadn't really noticed. But yeah, beautiful hillsides full of green trees. Yeah. Well, thanks Mike. Thanks for... No worries. Thanks for saying hi. And let me show you guys the full extent of the lake here. Here's the view of the lake from one of the parking areas. What a gorgeous spot. Really, really pretty. And it's called Island Lake because there are... let's see... where are they? Yeah, right here. There are a few islands out in the middle there. And then another few miles up the road we've got Beartooth Lake here. This is one of the more popular lakes in the area. Gorgeous water. Right at the foot of Beartooth Butte. Just another beautiful, beautiful spot. And now let's head to the literal high point of this journey of this... the Beartooth Highway here. I'm gonna head up to Beartooth Pass which I think is just under 11,000 feet. Again, we should have some pretty amazing views from up there. Haze willing. I'm excited. Sorry to interrupt the time lapse here but I wanted to show you these switchbacks that I'm about to climb. But more than that, I wanted to show you just this incredible scenery. elevation 10,947 feet. Let's go park in the the bigger parking area over here and take a look around. Okay, here's the parking area. Here's looking down on the way I came. You can see all the switchbacks down here. It is incredibly windy. There's a fat marmot. Or is he? Right there in the middle. Looks like just a ball of fur. And this is the pass itself. Just a kind of a miserable place. Just bleak, empty. Gorgeous though. Really, really pretty. Let's go walk over this way. See if we get something of a view looking off in the other direction. I'm on top of this little knoll near the parking lot. I'm gonna dip behind it to the other side to get out of the wind a little bit here. Oh, that is a relief. Check out the view down the other side. These people have the right idea. Out of the wind down there. But how cool is that? That is spectacular. And this is the way I'll be driving down somewhere along this way. You can see more switchbacks over there on the far side of the pass. Let's do it. Let's get back in the car and head downhill. By the way, I was gonna fly the drone up here. I really wanted to get a drone shot of those switchbacks, but it's just too windy. So I had to stop just a short distance below the pass to show you guys this view. This is incredible. Again, man, I wish it weren't hazy. Even in the haze it's beautiful, but without the haze it would be just incredible. Incredibly spectacular, that is. And this mountain range is called the Beartooths. It's named after a rock formation called the Beartooth. Which I can see barely through the haze over here. I don't know if you can see it. I will put an arrow to it if it's visible on the camera here. And then I'll also try to find a better... like a real picture that someone else took to put it here. But what a beautiful spot. Okay, brace yourselves here for some incoming spectacular scenery. I'm parked up there. I scrambled down a little bit to a little promontory jutting out into the canyon, into the valley. And what a valley it is. I mean, what? This is so gorgeous. So gorgeous. Got some remnants of glaciers up here. I mean, what a place. And again, if it were a bluebird sunny day, no clouds, no haze, no wind, I mean it would just be even better. But even in these conditions it's just amazing. And one more last look down this way. Well, that was quite the drive. I said at the beginning of this video that I had read online, or that I had heard that that road, that the Beartooth Highway, had been called the most beautiful road, or the most beautiful drive, or the best drive in America. And as I was driving along it yesterday and today, I thought, you know, this is really really pretty, but I don't think this is the most beautiful road I've ever driven. And then I got to Beartooth Pass and started going down the other side. That's when things really started to kick in, and that's when it really became spectacular. And so as I was driving down that road, I was thinking, okay, what are the most beautiful drives that I've ever done in the western U.S.? The ones that come to mind immediately are the Big Sur area, driving along the Pacific Coast Highway in Big Sur in California, driving along the Pacific Coast in Oregon. There are several Oregon chunks of the Pacific Coast Highway that are just spectacular. Highway 12 in southern Utah, I think that's Highway 12, is incredible, going through the high desert down there. The going to the sun road in Glacier National Park is breathtaking. And so I was thinking of all of these roads, and I was thinking, as far as, like, a mountain road goes, what are the best ones that I've driven? And I think that this one probably takes the cake for that. In general, it's probably in the top handful of beautiful and amazing roads I've driven in America. But as far as mountain roads, like, if we exclude coastal drives and desert drives, as far as mountain roads go, that might be the best mountain drive I've ever done. That was incredible. That was spectacular. I'm definitely going to go back when it isn't smoky and hazy, and I'll spend more time up there. I'll do some more hiking, and I'll bring the kayak. I'll go out onto the lakes and everything, and it'll be a fun place to spend more time sometime in the future when conditions are better. But I passed by some old mining structures on the side of a hill, and I pulled over to see what they were. There's a historical marker sign here. So let's get out and see exactly what we have here. These are really pretty impressive old mining buildings. Looks like there are a couple dozen of them on the hillside over here. This is what's left of the Smith Mining District. So this was a coal mining area in the first about half of the 20th century. Let's zoom in a little bit here. Get a closer look at some of these buildings. And the sign along the road here where I parked is to commemorate the Smith Mining Disaster. This was an explosion in one of the mines about a mile and a half west of here that killed 74 men. 74 miners. It was a methane gas explosion. Some of the men died from the explosion. Others, I think, died from suffocation down there and from the toxic gases that were down there. Just a terrible, terrible mining disaster. Happened in 1943. There were several mines in this area, and I think that these buildings here were kind of the the central district, central part of those different mining operations. Just terrible. I'd never heard of that mining disaster before. Didn't know about it until I decided to pull over here and read some of the the informational signs. Really interesting. Really sad. Before I leave here, I want to read to you this heartbreaking note left by two miners, Walter and Johnny, who were trapped. And they wrote this before they died. They said, goodbye, wives and daughters. We died an easy death. Love from us both. Be good. Okay. Got the windshield fixed. It's not completely gone. You can still see a little bit of something there, but as long as the crack doesn't spread across the windshield, I'm happy. And to switch gears completely, I'm now about 10 minutes outside of Cody at a World War II Japanese-American internment camp. So during World War II, after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government rounded up Japanese-Americans and sent them to these relocation camps scattered across the western U.S. There might be some in the east too. I don't know. I'm only familiar with them in the west. I've been to several of these before, and this one is interesting because it's in the best shape. There are still barracks that you can see. I think there are three or four of these here. Here is one of the barracks. Here's the neighbor. There's some sort of big old brick tower over here. Let's go take a look at that. This one, by the way, is called Heart Mountain Relocation Center, and I've been to... I don't remember the names of all of them, but I've been to a couple in Utah. I've been to one in Idaho, one or two in California, and this is my first one in Wyoming. I didn't even know this existed until, I think, yesterday or the day before, and I was looking for things to do on this trip, and I don't remember how I came across this, but I saw this and thought, oh, I want to go there. So the chimney here, according to this sign, was built for the boiler house of the hospital complex. The boiler house was built to provide hot water and heat during the cold Wyoming winters, and so this chimney is part of that. And apparently it is the symbol of this place, the symbol of Heart Mountain Relocation Center. Here's a closer look at the boiler house and the base of the chimney. At one point, the chimney was leaning pretty severely, and I think there's been some restoration work done here. It kind of still looks leaning to me. I don't know if that's just my eyes playing tricks on me, because I knew it was leaning at some point, or if it actually is still leaning. It looks to be in good shape, though, so I would guess that it has indeed been restored, and if it is leaning, then it's not not an issue anymore. I read that over 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry were basically arrested and forcibly removed to these remote camps. Two-thirds of those arrested and relocated were American citizens. It's just bad business. Not a good period of American history. If you want to learn more about this whole saga and part of American history, I'll put a link to the Wikipedia page that's called Internment of Japanese Americans. I'll put that in the video description. And it also has a map of all of the relocation centers if you want to find one near you to visit. Some of them have just, like, signs. Some of them have museums and visitor centers. This one actually does have a visitor center. It's kind of down the hill over here. I don't really have the time to go through the entire thing and show it to you, but I just wanted to stop by and give us all a reminder of this. That this happened. Let's go down to the area of the visitor center. It's down here. There's something I want to see. Something I want to show you guys. So this is what I wanted to see and what I wanted to show you guys. This is down the hill from... you can see up there the chimney. That's where I just was. This is a guard tower. This is not an original guard tower. I believe the lady I just talked to said that this is the original location. That is not an original tower. This is the visitor center and this is one of the original barracks that the Japanese would have been housed inside of. And I also learned that this up here... all of these buildings that I just saw up there... those barracks and those buildings... that was all the hospital area. The majority of the people interred at the camp were in what is now farmland over here. There were lots and lots of barracks over that way more that don't exist today. You can't see them. There's nothing to see. It's all farmland now. But the majority of the internees, I guess, were all over there. Over the three years that this place was operating, there were 14,000 people that came through here and at any one time the most they had was about 10,000 people. And there were these guard towers with armed guards stationed around the perimeter of the area. Interesting place. I wish I had more time here to explore a little bit, but it's five o'clock. Everything is closing down. I need to get out of here. I'm going to drive about an hour and a half to the Bighorn Mountains, which I'm going to explore tomorrow. But today I'm going to drive there and find a campsite. Hopefully a nice high elevation one. Nice and cool tonight. I'll let you know once I found a spot. Check out these guys over here. Got some bighorn sheep. It's right on the edge of the parking lot. There's some more right here and over here. These are the closer ones. I am in Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area. I decided to make this detour. I hadn't really planned on coming here, but when I was talking with Mike, that SUV RVing viewer who I met earlier today, he showed me some pictures of this place. I don't know if this is the exact spot he came to, but he showed me pictures of Bighorn Canyon. He said he loved it and so I wanted to come visit. Wow. Holy cow. This looks like a little bit of southern Utah in Wyoming. Actually, no. I'm in Montana now. I just remembered that I crossed the border a couple miles back. Holy cow. This is called the Devil's Canyon Overlook. Look at that canyon. In a day full of spectacular scenery already. I mean this just keeps keeps going. Keeps giving and giving. Wow. And then let's go check out the view in the other direction. And here we go. This is looking to the north. What a place. Somewhere over here, coming from the south side of the parking lot, there's a trail that leads down to an arch. And you can look through the arch and have a great view of the river. But this is where the bighorn sheep are. I don't want to bother them. And there's some people taking pictures of them over here. I don't want to bother them. So that'll have to wait for next time. Well, as you saw from that drone footage, this is an insane campsite. I'm parked right on a ridgetop. I've got this big old mountain over here. All treeless. I'm looking off in this direction. The mountains drop away and we have a hazy but beautiful sunset over here. To pull back the curtain a little bit, I'm filming this on the last day of August. So it'll be just a handful of days until you guys see this video. If you watch it when it was uploaded. Usually I like to have videos planned out a little bit further in advance, but for a variety of factors I didn't do that this time. And so I'm doing a pretty quick turnaround on this trip. So quick in fact that I need to get to editing this video in my RAV4 tonight so that I don't have to stay up all night when I get back from this trip. I'm going to get back on Friday night. You'll be seeing this video the next morning. I'll probably have to do some touch-up editing on this video that night. So pretty quick turnaround time for this video and I guess for the other videos in this series. It's going to be a three video series. This little trip through the mountains of Wyoming. These are the Bighorn Mountains in north central Wyoming. And I'm going to be spending the entirety of the next video exploring this mountain range. What a day. What incredible scenery we got to explore. Hope you guys enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching. Let me know what you think. Let me know if you have any questions. Let me know what your favorite part was. I'll see you in the next one. Stay tuned. Be sure to check out Adventure Know How, my new site, where you can gain access to a map of all of my free campsites, plus monthly bonus videos that you won't find anywhere else. Learn more at adventureknowhow.com. And for links to everything else SUV RVing related, visit suvrving.com. Links to these sites and more will be in the video description.