Scenic Red Lodge is the anchor for roadtripping the Beartooth Highway. After just a 60-mile drive from the Billings Logan International Airport, it's easy to kick back in this no-pressure mountain town, where the annual three-day rodeo and Western Victorian architecture aren't manufactured kitsch. In 1897, the Sundance Kid tried to rob a bank here. Buffalo Bill Cody and Calamity Jane slept at The Pollard Hotel, Red Lodge, and especially Its main drag, Broadway Avenue, has a nearly mythic Old West aura.
You could spend a fine day just eating. Montana Candy Emporium, filled with antique bicycles, and vintage signs, peddles chocolate truffles and old-fashioned sweets. Piccola Cucina at Ox Pasture serves classy Italian farm-to-table cuisine. On the banks of Rock Creek, the Red Box Car blends slurp-worthy shakes In an actual 1903 railway boxcar. Prerogative Kitchen delivers epicurean fast-casual fare. In between noshing, tour Yellowstone Wildlife Sanctuary, home to wolves, black bears, bison, elk and falcons that are unable to return to the wild. End the day in a wood-paneled room at Alpine Lodge, or sleep In bed-and-breakfast style at the gracious Inn on the Beartooth.