Lonesome Highway — Centennial Road to Tensleep Canyon via the Wind River Basin Rim

In 1925, a chunk of Sheep Mountain broke off and buried the Gros Ventre River, creating Slide Lake overnight. Two years later the natural dam failed and the town of Kelly nearly washed away. You drive through all of that history on the Gros Ventre Road, which leaves the pavement at Kelly, Wyoming, and follows the river east into the Bridger-Teton National Forest past the visible scar of the landslide on the south canyon wall. The road stays passable two-wheel-drive in dry conditions up to Lower Slide Lake, but beyond Atherton Creek Campground it tightens to rocky two-track as it climbs toward Jackpine Creek and the Red Hills. That upper stretch — red badlands breaking into green sagebrush benches above the river — is the payoff most day-trippers miss entirely.

Stock high-clearance 4WD handles the upper road comfortably in dry conditions; after rain the clay sections above Atherton Creek get genuinely slick. No permit required. Atherton Creek Campground offers developed sites with water seasonally; dispersed camping is available in the national forest above it. Cell service is gone once you clear Kelly. Best season is June through September — the road closes in winter. Fuel in Jackson, about 25 miles west. Elk, moose, and the occasional black bear make this one of the better wildlife corridors in the Greater Yellowstone region. Don’t rush it.