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This summer I had the great pleasure of driving the Needles Highway (South Dakota Highway 87), the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway and the Beartooth All American Road (US Highway 212) for the first time on a trip to Bozeman, MT. I had heard and read great things about these routes and they certainly delivered stunning vistas and fantastic geology (even thought it was raining and incredibly windy in some locations). I've driven across the country a dozen or so times and taken various routes, but I would have to agree that these three highways provide some of the best geology 'watching' in the country!
The Needles Highway was a bit congested since Sturgis was in full swing but luckily the views looking up weren't impeded by the traffic. However, the day was cut short by a hail-producing thunderstorm.
I also stopped at Dead Indian Hill Pass (see my Gigpan of this location here). This stretch of the road is full of switchbacks and quite steep (stay in low gear!):
This is one of my favorite vantage points on the Beartooth - it isn't as 'scenic' as some other photos I took, but I really like the sense of scale, isolation, serenity, and rugged nature of this landscape:
And these are a view other views driving the Beartooth, I think the partly cloudy drizzle really adds a nice effect to this landscape:
The paternoster lake system you can see in the photos from the Beartooth Highway are spectacular, I personally haven't seen such an easily accessible view of this stunning an alpine landscape. I've always enjoyed paternosters, as much for their morphology as the etymology of the word - it roughly translates from Latin as "Lords Prayer" and the fact that they look like a chain of rosary beads. None of the photos or Photosynths do the drives justice, if you like driving and you like geology, then put these on your list of must-do drives in the western United States!
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