Red Jammer Bus Tour

After experiencing the Going-to-the-Sun road as a passenger on the Red Jammer Bus tour, I think I would have been comfortable driving the road, at least as far as Logan Pass. It was not nearly as scary as the "death drive" we took earlier getting to Angel Lake. That said, it was nice having someone else do the driving and not having to worry about finding parking at the various stops. Our driver was very knowledgable, so Betty and I learned a lot that we would not have doing it on our own.

Red Jammer Bus

The buses are actually longer than the length of vehicles currently allowed on the road, but since they have been using these vehicles for decades, they were grandfathered in. If it had been a nice day, they would have the canvas top rolled back for an even better view of the scenery. It was cold, and the sky kept sputtering raindrops, so the bus remained covered with the windows up except when taking photos.

Our first stop was the view of Goose Island in St. Mary Lake. I think the foul weather made the view all the more dramatic.

Goose Island in St. Mary Lake

Right at the viewing area was some very fresh bear scat -- our second near miss at seeing a grizzly bear. I noticed that it looks a lot different than the scat we saw earlier. When I queried our "jammer" about this, he said that the first one was eating a lot of berries, and this one had eaten a lot more grass.

Grizzly bear scat

Next we saw our first and only glacier -- Jackson Glacier. There was a second glacier on the route, but the weather made it impossible to see. The bottom line is most of the glaciers in the park are gone due to global warming.

Jackson glacier

I am afraid I don't know exactly where this was taken, but it was somewhere near Logan Pass. I think it is my best photo of Glacier National Park.

Glacier National Park

We stopped at Logan Pass which is on the continental divide.

Logan Pass
on the Continental Divide

The driver drove us a bit beyond Logan Pass for a view of the road as it heads down the mountains towards the western entrance. He said he this was not part of the official tour. If that is true, he may have done this since we had not spent as much time at various stops on the drive up as most tours would because of the rain.