We took highway 212 from Billings to Yellowstone, expecting it to be interesting because it was marked as a scenic highway. Interesting doesn't begin to describe it -- we kept on going between the increasingly taller mountains until we got to a place where we couldn't go between them any more; we had to go over the mountains! This interesting geographical feature on highway 212 is called "Bear Tooth Pass", and it's pretty scary for us flatlanders. There were six-foot snow drifts, a blizzard, and minimal guard rails. They have eight-foot twigs stuck in the ground on either side of the road to tell the snow plows where to go. We just kept winding back and forth while climbing all the time and eventually got to the top of the mountain (where we couldn't see much for the snow) and started back down. We found out after we had gone through the pass that it had only opened for the summer on the first of June, and we went through on the third.
We ate lunch at the Soda Butte Inn in Cooke City and had buffalo burgers. Not a terribly memorable luncheon, and the service was rather indifferent. All the women had short hair, and all the men had ponytails. Go figure.
Somewhat revived by the nutrients, we went on into Yellowstone. The roads inside the park form a figure 8, and we went around the top loop on the first day. We got snowed on again inside the park, and even though the road was open, it was marked on the map "Closed from mid-October to mid-June".
We exited the park via the north entrance near Mammoth Hot Springs and took Highway 89 and I-90 to Bozeman, where we stayed for two nights at the Blue Sky Motel. We got into Bozeman kind of late, and one of the few places still serving food was Perkin's. We found out to our dismay that the Columbia franchise didn't have a monopoly on poorly-prepared food.