"Many Glacier" and a Neat Red Bus

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We were up before sunrise so that we could drive to Many Glacier in morning light. We were surprised at the number of cars on the road. Maybe that’s because the ranger stations aren’t manned that early so you can get in the park free. lol
We parked the rig at the Many Glacier Lodge parking lot. While the sun was up, there was a slight cloud cover so we had to wait awhile. We decided to have our gourmet cereal breakfast. We then left the motorhome, heading different directions, each thinking that he/she is going to get the better vantage point. With nature photography, there is often a lot of wait time for the perfect picture. True nature photographers develop much patience to sit hour after hour, waiting to “click”. We only needed to wait about 45 minutes for the sun to shine through the clouds and bathe the glaciers in sunshine.
There was a glacier tour boat docked and boarding passengers. Once it left land, it navigated across Swiftcurrent Lake towards Many Glacier. Most of the passengers were donned in hiking apparel, carrying walking sticks and backpacks. Looked like they were going to have a great day.
I spotted two Adirondack chairs on the balcony of the lodge. Neither was occupied and so I arranged them as if they were inviting someone to sit and enjoy the view. Looked like the kind of photo that might be on a brochure cover.
We reconnected and walked around a bit before heading back to the motorhome. We needed to be at St. Mary’s Lodge by 10:00 AM for an arranged tour in one of the park’s red buses. They are 75 years old and are a cross between a station wagon, bus and jeep. The roof of the vehicle is canvas and it rolls back for summer use. It enables the passengers to stand up like “jack-in-the-boxes” to take pictures on the extremely narrow road. Twenty some years ago we could drive the Going to the Sun Road ourselves. Now, you can’t be over 21 feet. We are two feet too long.
The drivers of the buses are called “Jammers. The name comes from years ago when the buses were equipped with a standard transmission and folks could hear the drivers shifting gears. The buses were built in 1936 by the White Motor Company of Cleveland Ohio. Ford Motor Company helped the park restore the engines in 2001 and they are running great. 17 people with the driver can easily be accommodated.
“Gus” picked us up and quickly began entertaining the group. He knew the answer to just about any question you had and he instantly figured out who the problem child of the group might be and had the person sit next to him in the front of the bus. Could anyone guess who that problem child might be? DENNIS. Actually, Dennis was pretty well behaved but bantered with the driver to keep our trip interesting. He even assisted the driver to remove and fold our canvas top so we would have an open air ride.
Our first stop was St. Mary’s Lake at the Goose Island lookout. This is the iconic Glacier National Park image and if we had to quit the trip after that moment, we would have been okay with it.
We stopped at a waterfall, learned about rocks and how this portion of the Rockies was formed. We took the narrow, winding road all the way to Logan’s Pass. At that point, we stopped to look around. Some folks went to the gift shop. There were big horn sheep grazing in the snow still on the mountainside but they were too far away for pictures of any consequence.
Gus explained to us that if we continued on the Going to the Sun Road past Logan’s Pass, the road really narrows and when two of the red buses pass each other, there is only six inches between them. That is the road we remember from years ago. It was truly a white knuckle drive.
We retraced our steps, stopping at a couple more turnouts on our way back to St. Mary’s Lodge. We learned that our fellow passengers were from Seattle, Minneapolis, Cleveland and of all places, Lapeer Michigan! The young couple from Minneapolis had taken the train to Glacier. It took them 21 hours. They were thoroughly enjoying themselves and didn’t even rent a car. They even planned to head up to Waterton, which is the Canadian side of Glacier National Park by bus. We have been there before and really didn’t have the desire to go there again. They have a beautiful lodge nestled in the mountains called the Prince of Wales Hotel. It looks as though it is out of a storybook.
Once back at the lodge, Gus bid us farewell and drove off with the remaining passengers, soon to be returned to their starting point. We headed south for one last spot in Glacier before we left. The spot is called Two Medicine. When we reached the turnoff point called MT 49, a large roadway sign bellowed,” No vehicles over 21 feet allowed to travel on MT 49”. Great. As we said earlier, our rig is 23 feet. Sadly, we turned the RV around and took a look at the map. There was no other way to enter the park to Two Medicine so we opted to start traveling east. 1,900 miles ahead of us, so we might as well get started. We looked for a spot that we could reach by about 6:00 PM. Turned out to be Havre, Montana, 187 miles due east on Hwy 2.
On the way to Havre, Dennis had a field day photographing wheat fields, silos, grain elevators, trains and wind turbines. The train tracks run right through enormous fields and in every little burg you will see the grain elevators right next to the train tracks. There were actually three tracks in some areas and we saw quite a bit of train traffic. Dennis was in his glory, even singing something about “motorhomes” every time he would see one tooling down Hwy. 2. Scary.
We found a couple campgrounds, one in town and one three miles out. The one in town didn’t offer internet. The one in the country did but when we got there, it was literally someone’s backyard and they were going to run an extension cord for us. All for the low, low price of $25. We passed on the “incredible” offer and made the brave decision to find a Walmart. We joined five other rigs. One couple was sitting outside their RV, drinking glasses of wine. We kid you not. It was 94 degrees at that point so probably getting sloshed wasn’t such a bad idea but we just can’t picture ourselves in a Walmart lot drinking wine in a canvas chair. Gives a whole new meaning to redneck tailgating. Lol
Settled in for a peaceful evening, we heard a familiar sound: a train track runs behind Walmart and remember how we said there was a lot of train traffic? You can figure out the rest.