There are a number of ways to get from Milwaukee to Yellowstone National Park by air – and if you haven’t been there, you definitely should get to Yellowstone National Park somehow, sometime soon.

There are flights (typically via connections) from Milwaukee to Jackson Hole, Bozeman, West Yellowstone, Salt Lake City and Denver, though the latter two require fairly lengthy drives to the park upon arrival. Flying to Billings, Montana, however, comes with a number of benefits, beyond the fact that it’s less than two hours by car from butte-top airport to park entrance.

I doubt you’ll be headed to Yellowstone this year (unless you’re a snow fiend), but you know you ought to plan your trip well in advance, so in that spirit, here are five reasons (in no particular order) that you should fly to Billings (pop. 109,000) when you visit Yellowstone next year:

Beartooth Highway

With absolutely stunning vistas and dramatic drops – to say nothing of the picturesque beauty of Beartooth Lake with the mountains behind it – Beartooth Highway is about as gorgeous as Yellowstone itself. There’s a quicker way to get from Billings to the park and back, but you miss this route at your peril. As my co-worker Jimmy Carlton said with characteristic understatement, "It’s America’s most beautiful highway."

Plan four hours, even though it doesn’t technically take that long to make the trek to Yellowstone’s northeast entrance. But you’ll pull over constantly to snap photos and breathe in the views – and you’ll want to stop in quaint, bustling Red Lodge for some ice cream, too.

Breweries

When you get to Billings, you might notice that one of the tallest buildings – if not the tallest – downtown has a U.S. Bank sign on top, reminding you of home. Also like Milwaukee, Billingsonians enjoy a good beer. Head over to Montana Avenue, between about 22nd and 30th Streets, to walk the brewery district.

Here, in old Billings, there’s great 19th and early 20th century building stock, including the old train station buildings (pictured above), and many of them house restaurants, brew pubs and distilleries. You can find a map on VisitBillings.com, but definitely check out Trailhead Spirits for small-batch whiskey, and Uberbrew across the street, where you can buy flights at just a dollar a sample (pictured below).

(NOTE: Just after this story was written Uberbrew won four medals and 2016 Small Brewery & Brewer Of The Year title at the Great American Beer Festival and was runner-up in the Alpha King Challenge.)

Rimrocks

Billings is surrounded by rimrocks, long flat sandstone outcroppings that are remnants of a sea that once covered the area. Now, your plane will touch down on one, offering a dramatic introductory view of the city and there are other rimrocks where you can also go hiking, running, biking or for a drive. Head up there at dawn or dusk for a stunning sunrise or sunset.

Family fun

We set up shop at the Best Western Kelly Inn, which is a bit out of downtown, but in compensation has a great little waterpark-style pool that was the perfect way for us to close out our Yellowstone trip. Just heading home would’ve been a downer, but giving the kids a couple hours on the slides and other features in the pool thrilled them ... and, therefore, us. We also enjoyed the bears – fake, don’t panic – climbing up the side of the building to peek into the windows. There's free breakfast in the lobby and did I mention the casino across the street?

While you’re in Billings, you can also check out the Yellowstone Art Museum; Moss Mansion, which offers a glimpse into Western life at the dawn of the 20th century; Wise Wonders Children’s Museum, which focuses on STEM topics; and the Western Heritage Center, which uses a series of exhibits in a stunning Romanesque Revival library building to tell the story of the history of the Yellowstone River Valley, where Billings is located.

Pictograph Cave State Park & Little Bighorn

^{(PHOTO: Tbennert, Creative Commons)}

Both of these parks are easy drives from Downtown Billings. Just five miles from Billings, Pictograph Cave State Park has 23 acres of caves that are adorned with images created between 200 and 2,100 years ago by the native peoples of the area. A bit farther afield – 60 miles southeast – is Little Bighorn, the site of Custer’s famous last stand: the battlefield where the U.S. Army’s 7th Calvary fell to the Sioux and Cheyenne in 1876. The national monument memorializes the Sioux, Cheyenne and 7th Calvary.

For details on sites, lodging, restaurants and more, go to Visit Billings.com.