Western Montana

I have always been fascinated by old cars, so on a vacation to Glacier National Park I decided that my boyfriend and I were going to take a tour on the Red Jammer, or the Red Bus as most people call them. The buses are called Red Jammers because they originally had manual transmissions and the drivers could be heard jamming the gears as they drove around the park. The red buses are a 1936 to 1939 vintage and have been recently renovated by the Ford Motor Company in 2002.

We went to Glacier in late May so there was only one tour offered at this time, the Huckleberry Mountain Tour. We were not only the first tour of the year, but also the first time that this tour had run. We were picked up at the Lake McDonald Lodge along with eight other passengers. The bus has several pick ups before it arrived, however the lodge was the only one that had passengers that day.

We did not have very good weather for most of our Glacier trip, but this day the driver took a chance as the sun peaked out from the gloomy clouds and he took the canvas top off the bus. I was delighted with the experience of having the top off as it gave us a much better view of the park than just looking out the side windows. Rain only pledged us for the last 15 minutes of our tour, so having the top off was well worth it.

The tour started with a trip down the shoreline of Lake McDonald on the Going to the Sun Road. Once we arrived at Apgar Village the driver stopped for everyone to take a photo of the picturesque Lake McDonald and surrounding mountains. Once everyone had captured some beauty we were on our way to Camas road, one of the western most roads of the park. The driver stopped several times for us to get out and enjoy the scenery at marked exhibit spots. Each spot had an informational sign that told us a little bit about the area, such as what animals we might see as we gazed out into the field or why the trees were burned. We learned from the driver that there were two recent fires. One in 2001, a natural caused fire and one in 2003, caused by man.

The 2001 was caused by a lighting strike which I found interesting because it was caused by nature, so they let it run it’s course, burning until it came near buildings. The 2003 fire was caused by a human outside of the park and fire fighters worked hard to put out that fire, even starting a controlled fire to stop the original fire from destroying the park. As the driver explained the fires, it was almost as though he was making light of the situation. Although they can not always help that fires happen, he explained to us that the fires help rebuild the forest with vegetation for the animals, which has a hard time growing in the dense forest - so we just went along with it - it did not make for a nice looking forest but whatever helps the animals.

The tour turned back on Camas road and continued back to the Going to the Sun road. We stopped for a quick walk by the edge of Lake McDonald near Fish Creek. The tour continued on the road past the Lake McDonald Lodge to the “end” of the road at Avalanche Creek, about 16 miles down the Going to the Sun Road, which was as far as you could go due to snow conditions. The tour was coming to an end and the driver wanted to get us all back in time for dinner as dinner time was quickly approaching. We all hopped on the bus and headed back to the lodge, where we were treated to a slight drizzle of rain on the way back. Both my boyfriend and I had a very enjoyable tour and the driver was very knowledgeable. The tour in total was 3.5 hours for $35 each. There are several other tours available, most of them starting around June 13^th of this year.

There are a few tours that start in late May, like the Huckleberry Mountain Tour, so it is worth checking out if you are visiting before the peak season. To check out tour information you can use their website www.glacierparkinc.com or call them at 406-892-2525. I would recommend making a reservation, although our bus was not completely full, I can see that once the weather gets better this would be an awesome add on to anyone’s vacation in the park.