Glacier National Park - Red Bus Tour

*NOTE:  You can click on any picture to enlarge it.

We arrived at Glacier National Park Thursday and headed out Friday morning early for our Red Bus Tour through the park.  There were several different tours available.  We decided to take the all day tour.  We traveled the entire length of the Going-to-the Sun road.  We left at 8:30 am and returned at around 5:30 pm.   It was a great day.

We arrived early at the Apgar Visitor Center where we waited to board the Red Bus.

We look like a couple of tourist! 

The iconic Red Buses were a creation of Roe Emery and Walter White, a VP of the Cleveland-based White Motor Company.   The buses were manufactured as the Model 706 from 1936 to 1939.  Many in the current fleet of Red Buses have been in service since the 1930's.  They were the first authorized motor transportation in any National Park.  The Red Buses originally cost $5000. each back in 1936.  During the early years of touring, women were discouraged from riding in the front because they distracted the male drivers. Boy, how things have changed.  We had a female driver for our tour named Claire and she did a great job.  The drivers are called "jammers".  They got the name because of the sound the gears made when shifting on the steep roads of the park.  The jamming sound came from the unsynchronised manual transmissions, where double-clutching was a must.   The original standard transmissions were replaced with newer automatics, removing the trademark "jamming" sound.  The bodies were removed from their original chassis and built upon modern Ford E-Series van chassis.
They have roll back canvas tops, which  Alan agreed to climb up on the side of one of them to help our driver roll our top back.  You really can't appreciate how high this was off the ground from the picture I took.   It was a cool clear morning when we got going on the tour and for the first half of the day we were either in the forest or on the shady side of the mountains.  Each seat has a wool blanket to either sit on or lay across your lap.  By afternoon we were in the sun and it got quite warm.  The weather, however, was magnificent!

Our first stop after rolling the top back, was at the Lake McDonald Lodge just down the road.  It is a classic chalet style lodge located 10 miles inside the Glacier National Park's west entrance on the Going-to-the-Sun road, nestled on the shores of the largest lake inside the park.

The lodge was built in 1913 with 82 guest rooms split between the three-story main lodge.  On the property, there is also a row of cabins, Snyder Hall and The Cobb House.  There is way too much history for my blog, but it is a beautiful place! 

This was inside the lobby looking up all of the mounted animals.  

This is on the back deck of the lodge looking down at the lake.

By the time we were getting back onto the bus, more had come buses arrived at the lodge with more visitors.

Our "jammer" slowed the bus to let us see these guys fishing.  She was telling us that they would probably not be catching anything in upper McDonald creek.  This little creek can become a raging torrent during the height of spring runoff and is fed entirely of snowmelt.  The water is crystal clear, very cold, and has next to no nutrients.   Therefore, there are hardly any fish to be caught on the creek.  Knowing that, you kinda have to feel sorry for these two guys.   They probably have high hopes of catching a nice trout for dinner.

You will be seeing many pictures of mountains in the blog....many of them are from different areas throughout the park and/or even from miles outside the park.  If you tire of seeing a lot of mountains, feel free to skip past them quickly.   The pictures don't do justice to any of the scenery.  You can't actually see that the valley below is sooooo far down.  It is all truly breathtaking.

Some of the roadway on the Going-to-the-Sun road had very short guardrails, usually made from placing large stones along the road.  Some areas had the actual metal guardrails. Our "jammer" assured us that any vehicle going 25 MPH would have a hard time going up and over the rails.  Still a nail biter in some places for me.

These were other buses ahead or behind us occasionally.  Even though they don't actually travel together, you just see them at the various stops or along the roadway.

This area had logs for rails.  Although they looked very strong, they were short.  Still, I keep telling myself it is all quite safe.  There have only been a very few accidents where someone went over the side since the park opened. I was feeling much better after hearing that bit of news.

I know someone that would NOT like this road.  Hmmmm?

Some of the snow packs way up at the top are glaciers and some are just snow packs.  There are certain criteria for being a glacier.  They are formed on land, they are made of ice, and the main one is that they must move.  I personally could not tell the difference.  Our "jammer" was able to point out 8 glaciers while on our tour that day.

The picture below is of an area where people could park and walk over to the snow.

The river below is a long way down.

Up near the top.

A rocky area near the top of the mountain.  Breathtaking.

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We made it to the Visitor Center at Logan's Pass at the top of the mountain.   It's a good thing we were in the red bus because the parking lot was full.  There are designated spots for the tour buses. 

One of the glaciers in the background.

We stopped at a area where we could take a short hike out to a huge rock overlooking the lake below.

It was beautiful......

......and quite windy at the top!  What a view we had!

This was taken from the balcony of Many Glacier Lodge.  The boat leaving is a tour boat.  There are several lakes in the park from which you can tour by boat.

I didn't get a good picture of the lodge.  It is sprawling and all wouldn't fit in the picture.  This was as we were driving up to the bus deboarding area.

We ran across some free range cattle.  Some of the land we traveled through to get to this lodge is part of the Indian reservation.

Another glacier in the far background.  This was the overlook for the Jackson Glacier.  Nice view!

We got caught at the back of a line of cars and buses that had stopped in the roadway.  We sat for a moment and  then our driver decided to go on around them.  Halfway around the other vehicles, someone hollered "bear".  Our "jammer" jammed on the brakes and pulled over.  There was a young bear on the opposite side the road in the middle of some berry bushes.  As everyone waited and  tried to get a picture of the bear, it came out of the bushes and walked between our bus and the one behind us.  Needless to say, everyone on our bus got a good picture.  

Saw these teepees on the  road back to the park.  I think we finally decided they were part of a campground.