National Geographic Adventure publishes a long feature I photographed about route 89, and a trip we made from Canada to Mexico along that route.
Two for the road: The author (at right) and the photographer head south on two lane route 89. Opposite: the byway, the outdoor lover's answer to route 66, rolls from high mountains to low desert, through the heart of the American West.
Big Sky Ride. Clockwise from top right: A barfly in the Old Saloon, in Emigrant, Montana, recalls his early years astride a Harley; the author gets an elevated perspective in Montana; hiking to Glacier National Park's Iceberg Lake; byway, this way.
The West Gone Wild: Putting in on Greys River, Wyoming. A bull Elk roams Yellowstone National Park. Cruising a spur road near the Grand Tetons; a route 89 rest stop.
The Canadian Border;Cruising wide-open 89; Zion National Park; Gold found in the ghost town of Stanton.
Red Rock Run: Cruising Bryce Canyon National Park's hoodoos (above). Clockwise from right: Lodging in Stanton, Arizona; a perfect perch in Bryce; the author stops for a soak at Utah's Mystic Hot Springs.
Mark Sundeen and Jeff Pflueger "The Ballad of Route 89" From Montana's glacier country and the Tetons to the Grand Canyon, route 89 doles out a greatest-hits sampling of iconic US landscapes. "It takes you to some of the national parks' most spectacular spots, but our favorite sites were discovered in between," says writer Sundeen (above, left), who drove the 1,700-mile byway with photographer Pflueger (above, right) for our feature. "Stanton was the moment for me," Pflueger says, of an odd little Arizona encampment they came across. "To meet people reinhabiting a ghost town and playing out their gold-mining dreams in the desert was like seeing the Old West come alive."