GOING TO THE SUN VIA MAGNIFICENT GLACIER NATIONAL PARK

Glacier National Park, home of the Blackfeet Indian Nation and 3 million visitors a year. I wish that was fog!

I couldn’t see the forest for the trees.   

Actually, I couldn’t see the forest for the smoke.

Two days and a million magnificent Montana acres with which to work and Jimmy and I arrive Glacier National Park (GNP) in the midst of three separate wildfires obliterating the otherwise spectacular scenic beauty of this Crown of the Continent.

Holy smokes!  Karma can be such a beast, especially when it comes to travel.  

Travel always ups the ante.  Lay some dough down, a few days, a week if you’re lucky and more expectations than you can ever hope to cram into a single suitcase and you’d better believe karma will be looking for an engraved invitation to the party.  

Lesley Gore and I sang, “It’s my party (and I’ll cry if I want to)." 

Crying does such an ugly number on my mascara. My funk didn’t last long.  Besides, word on the street, a.k.a., Glacier’s amazing Going-to-the-Sun Road,

In 2003, one of the worst years for fires in GNP, 144,000 acres were burned.

is wildfires are essential for the  ecosystem of the forest.  Did you know the only means of germination for the mighty redwoods is fire?    

No redwoods at GNP; just another heat wave, more drought and a million acres of tinder to drive home Al Gore’s global warming warning.  The smoke was indeed An Inconvenient Truth.

Would you believe this is what Glacier National Park’s engineering marvel, Going-to-the-Sun Road, looked like before Mother Nature's latest ecological efforts?   NICE!

Wikipedia comes through, again.

Where was I?  Oh yeah, redwoods.  You can read more about Earth’s largest living creature, the General Sherman tree, and my walk among the giants, via this link. 

Glacier National Park is all about, well, glaciers.  Duh!   But not in the OMG-look-at-that-magnificent-glacier way; that would be Iceland. Ever see a glacial lagoon? GNP is more, OMG-we-have-glaciers-to-thank-for-these-magnificent-mountains-valleys-and-lakes-stretching-as-far-as-the-eye-can-see?   

Okay, maybe we couldn’t see much of anything beyond Jimmy’s nose.  Eat your heart out Jimmy Durante!

These environmental friendly babies (no, not Jimmy) have the option of running on cleaner burning propane. Jimmy runs on charm and good looks. Ooh la la!

My ‘Jammer’ Jimmy definitely nose how to have a good time, although getting him to give up the driver’s seat during our two-hour ride up and back down the eastern portion of Glacier’s 53-mile engineering marvel wasn't easy.  The convertible canvas top on the 1930’s Red Bus allowed for unobscured views of GNP.  

We played peak-a-boo with the mountain peaks throughout our ride on the Going-to-the-Sun Road.

The original fleet of 33 Red Buses was built by the White Motor Company of Cleveland, Ohio between 1936 and 1939.  The Model 706 Buses were the third generation of buses to be used for touring in the park.  All but two of the original buses were modified by Ford Motor Company between 2000 and 2002.  The park kept one of the originals for display at the headquarters in Western Glacier. According to our driver, Sherri, a second bus, no longer in use, was damaged approximately fifty years ago by two joy-riding Jammers looking for a good time after hours.  They were looking at unemployment, too, when their escapade was all said and done. 

No, these two were not the aforementioned Jammers. They were our drivers for 32 of us Going-to-the-Sun.

Otherwise, GNP still operates the original fleet of 1930’s buses.  The original bodies were spiffied up a bit and then placed atop a Ford E-Series van chassis during renovations.  In 1989 the unsynchronized transmissions with double-clutches (the sound of the gears when shifting on the steep roads of the park led to the title ‘Jammers’ for the original male-only drivers who possessed the strength to handle the buses) were also replaced with new automatics.   No jamming noises the day of our visit, only the sacred hum of the earth to soothe the soul.   

Outstanding job by the glaciers 2 to 3 million years ago cutting and polishing these Rocky Mountains.

If the current environmental conditions persist, by 2030 the 25 small glaciers that are still part of GNP will disappear completely.  So predicts Dan Fagre, a U. S. Geological Survey ecologist working in GNP.  There were originally 150 glaciers in GNP in 1910 when President Taft signed the bill designating the million acres of scenic wonderland the tenth national park.

Don't wait to visit GNP if you want a glimpse of the glaciers. They're fading fast.

Standing at the top of Logan’s Pass (the summit, named after GNP's first park superintendent, Major William R. Logan, also straddles the Continental Divide), touching the sky at 6,646 feet up, the place felt like heaven on earth despite the haze.  Hundreds of miles of wilderness trails and one Going-to-the-Sun Road invited solace, a glimpse into the divine, and a sense of order in an often mad, mad world. 

I’m still haunted by the bigger can’t-see-the-forest-for-the-trees picture. Are we building our own road to the sun, destroying the planet and our future in the name of progress?   
     
Holy smokes!  That's KARMA, as in catastrophe.      


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