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Montana: Jammin’ the Sun ~ Article by Bobbie Hasselbring of www.realfoodtraveler.com |
| WAVE Journey |
| Women's Adventures, Vacations & Experiences ~ Your Journey Starts Here! |
At 1.6 billion years old, they’re oldest things in Montana’s Glacier National Park.
The swirls in the rock, fossilized blue green algae called straromatalites, look like something
out of Picasso’s “Starry Night.” Our driver, Chris, pulls off the road so we can take a look.
“Pulls off” is perhaps an overstatement. When you’re a 25-foot long bus, there’s no pulling off
Glacier’s Going to the Sun Road. Make a mistake on its steep, six percent grades and you
could plunge 3,000 feet straight down. Our bus, at eight feet one inch wide, takes up more
than half the width of the curvy, 16 foot road. So Chris gently sidles the coach up against the
ancient wall, leaving a narrow track for others to navigate around.
The engineering marvel that is the 52-mile-long Going to the Sun Road, the only road in Glacier
National Park, recently celebrated its 75th anniversary and is a National Historic Civil
Engineering Landmark. It’s also listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The
serpentine ribbon of asphalt traverses the heart of the park, crosses the Continental Divide
and gives visitors jaw-dropping views of lakes, waterfalls, dense forests, hanging valleys,
alpine tundra, and the soaring, glacier-studded peaks of the Lewis and Livingstone mountain
ranges. If you’ve got nerves of steel, it’s possible to drive the Sun Road yourself (though no
RV’s are allowed). However, a more relaxing way to enjoy the scenery and learn about the
park’s fascinating history, geology and its plants and animals is to take a Red Bus tour.
The swirls in the rock, fossilized blue green algae called straromatalites, look like something
out of Picasso’s “Starry Night.” Our driver, Chris, pulls off the road so we can take a look.
“Pulls off” is perhaps an overstatement. When you’re a 25-foot long bus, there’s no pulling off
Glacier’s Going to the Sun Road. Make a mistake on its steep, six percent grades and you
could plunge 3,000 feet straight down. Our bus, at eight feet one inch wide, takes up more
than half the width of the curvy, 16 foot road. So Chris gently sidles the coach up against the
ancient wall, leaving a narrow track for others to navigate around.
The engineering marvel that is the 52-mile-long Going to the Sun Road, the only road in Glacier
National Park, recently celebrated its 75th anniversary and is a National Historic Civil
Engineering Landmark. It’s also listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The
serpentine ribbon of asphalt traverses the heart of the park, crosses the Continental Divide
and gives visitors jaw-dropping views of lakes, waterfalls, dense forests, hanging valleys,
alpine tundra, and the soaring, glacier-studded peaks of the Lewis and Livingstone mountain
ranges. If you’ve got nerves of steel, it’s possible to drive the Sun Road yourself (though no
RV’s are allowed). However, a more relaxing way to enjoy the scenery and learn about the
park’s fascinating history, geology and its plants and animals is to take a Red Bus tour.
Glacier’s red, open-air buses are pieces of rolling history. The buses, with their long chassis
and leather bench seats, were constructed between 1936-39 by the White Motor Company of
Cleveland, Ohio. Before private cars were common, visitors to the national parks arrived by
train and toured the parks by stagecoach or on horseback. In the mid-1930s, the National
Park Service commissioned Count Alexis de Sakhoffsky, a famous industrial stylist of the time,
to design a touring bus. Sakhoffsky’s creation featured a canvass rollback top, roll down
windows and a door for every row of seats.
Soon the elegant coaches were crisscrossing Yellowstone, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Mount
Rainer, Yellowstone, Yosemite and Zion National parks. Each fleet was painted a distinctive
color for its park. In Yellowstone, for instance, the buses were yellow. In Glacier, they were
painted brilliant red, in honor of the ripe ash berries that appear in the fall on nearby
mountainsides.
As more people drove their own cars into national parks, the tour buses became less popular.
After World War II, all the park buses--except for those in Glacier—were taken out of service.
Today, with its fleet of 33, Glacier’s Reds comprise the largest and longest-running bus
touring fleet in the world.
and leather bench seats, were constructed between 1936-39 by the White Motor Company of
Cleveland, Ohio. Before private cars were common, visitors to the national parks arrived by
train and toured the parks by stagecoach or on horseback. In the mid-1930s, the National
Park Service commissioned Count Alexis de Sakhoffsky, a famous industrial stylist of the time,
to design a touring bus. Sakhoffsky’s creation featured a canvass rollback top, roll down
windows and a door for every row of seats.
Soon the elegant coaches were crisscrossing Yellowstone, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Mount
Rainer, Yellowstone, Yosemite and Zion National parks. Each fleet was painted a distinctive
color for its park. In Yellowstone, for instance, the buses were yellow. In Glacier, they were
painted brilliant red, in honor of the ripe ash berries that appear in the fall on nearby
mountainsides.
As more people drove their own cars into national parks, the tour buses became less popular.
After World War II, all the park buses--except for those in Glacier—were taken out of service.
Today, with its fleet of 33, Glacier’s Reds comprise the largest and longest-running bus
touring fleet in the world.
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