Today we took the Red Bus Tour to Canada.  And back.  This is a Red Bus:

Actually, it is the very same Red Bus we spent the better part of the day in.  And it was a fine and fun day.  The Red Busses date back to the 1930’s.  By the 1960’s few of them were running and they eventually went out of service.  Sometime in the 1990’s the Ford Motor Company (that Ford) spent about $7M to restore about 30 of the busses.  They run on propane now.

Our tour left the hotel (rustic, remember) at 11am.  We had been wondering about the name Many Glacier.  Our tour guide, Gary, confirmed that it got the name because there are a lot of glaciers.  Doh!

We got this great view during the ride:

 

This picture alone has ‘many’ glaciers.  The top one is called the Salamander Glacier for somewhat obvious reasons.  Below that is the Grinnell Glacier.  Some time ago they were one glacier.  As the earth warms the glaciers are disappearing and becoming ice floes. 

From the hotel we went north to Canada where we had to show passports and eventually made our way to the Prince of Wales Hotel for lunch.  Afterward we saw two bears on the ride back.  They look cute.  From a distance.  We also saw osprey, deer, a whole bunch of trees, mountains, mountains, mountains, a lot of lakes, a waterfall and… wait for it… many glaciers.

Our tour guide was great.  He talked a lot about the flora and the fauna but also about the history of the park.  We got an appreciation for how American’s have evolved their thinking about national parks and what they expect from them.    Back in the day, they killed any predators and stocked the lakes with fish.  Even the Red Bus illustrates evolving attitudes.  When the park was founded in 1915 horseback was the normal mode of transportation.  (That is after you took a train most of the way across the country.)  By the 1920’s, people wanted to use their cars to get to and get around the national parks.  That led to the construction of roads through the park which then supported the busses.

Last year we were in Yellowstone.  Between Yellowstone and Glacier, Glacier seems in many ways more accessible.  If you want to hike, they have more trails than roads (by far) and all are well marked and safe.  If you want to drive, the roads are great.  And if you want to learn, the tour is awesome as are the various exhibits and slides shows they run.  And of course the beauty of the place is astounding.

Tomorrow we hit the road again.  It will be nice to stay somewhere less, well, rustic.  With Internet.

Today we drove through Glacier National Park.  Our timing was great as they only opened the road for the season yesterday.  Parts were open a week or two ago, but until yesterday you could not travel the width of the park on the “Going to the Sun Road.”

It’s an incredible experience.  We made three stops.  Not far from the west entrance we stopped at Lake McDonald and hung out at the lodge for a little while.  The lake is quite the scene:

From there we traveled to Logan’s Pass where we found snow.  On the second full day of summer.  We tromped around in the slush for a little while; well one of us did.  It was nice to feel some cold crisp air and yet not be too cold.

Finally we hit up the visitor center at the east end of the park as well as the gift shop.

Like Yellowstone, the west side of the continental divide is extremely rugged.  We drove on roads that hug the mountain on one side with extreme drops on the other side.  But when you get over the mountain, or through the pass, you mostly roll gently down hill until you start to see areas that are more like prairie.  The hybrid liked that part of the drive.  We got some good mileage!

We’re spending the night at the Many Glacier Hotel.  It’s, um, rustic.  Historic, and grand, but rustic.  Like a lot of National Park properties, things aren’t up to Marriott or Hyatt standards.  We’ll live.

We took a lot of photos today and got about twelve or so we want to share.  But the Internet here is too slow, I mean rustic, to upload them.  We’ll get the Smugmug site rolling in a day or two when we hit a Marriott or a Hyatt or something.

We’re looking forward to tomorrow and the Red Bus tour.

No not unwanted emails.  Spam, as in Spamalot.  We saw an off, off, off, off-Broadway production in Big Fork, Montana.  Our friends got to Columbia Falls two days before us.  They spent their days dodging rain and hiking when they could.  And researching the local entertainment options.  Big Fork is a little town on the northeast corner of Flathead Lake.  It’s small and packed with gift shops, restaurants, bars and a summer theater that has been performing four plays per summer for 62 years.

Spamalot is “lovingly ripped off from the motion picture Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”  The cast are young actors from all over the country.  They were enthusiastic and really did great.  We all enjoyed ourselves; it was a great evening out.

The rest of the day was travel from Spokane, about 260 miles, much of it off the interstate.  It rained some  but no where near as much as yesterday.  Montana’s natural beauty came through all day.

The 2013 edition of the Excellent Adventure has begun!  The big idea this time is to drive to Santa Fe.  By way of Montana.  And Canada.  Because, like, they are on the way, right?  Actually, the idea is to head to Glacier National Park then drive down the east side of the Rockies and back up the west side.

Today we made it to Spokane.  It took a while.  It was very rainy and a little cold, there was a bunch of traffic and they were doing “intermittent rolling slow downs.”  Such fun!  But we did get here before dark and had a nice dinner.

Tomorrow things get more interesting as we head into the mountains of Western Montana and meet up with our east coast friends.  We hear the Internet is flaky so we might not be able to post for a day or two.

Well, we’re about to hit the road again.  This time we’re going to Santa Fe.  We’ll go down the east side of the Rockies and come back up the west side.  We’re meeting some friends along the way for a few days in Glacier National Park in Montana.

For the first time we’re carrying a Mac instead of a Windows PC.  But we can bear to part with one of the best blogging tools ever, Windows Live Writer.  So… this post is to prove, or not, that WLW works well, or well enough, when running inside Parallels.  If you can read this, it must have worked!

Otherwise much of the technology remains the same.  Same car as last year (Cayenne Hybrid), same camera (Sony DSC-H55), etc.  We do have a mini- in-car fridge this time, we’ll see how that works.

More from the road in a few days!

Today was the last day of the trip. It was a relatively short day; we covered most of the width of Washington State. There are two ways to do it; I-90 or US-2. We took the scenic route (US-2) because it allowed us to avoid doubling back on I-90 and so we could visit Leavenworth. Leavenworth? For reasons we don’t understand, there is a fake Bavarian town in the middle of a forest. Here’s a photo of the fake ‘musikhaus’. They are presenting “Thoroughly Modern Millie” which must surely be a traditional Bavarian play.

Let’s not even discuss the PT Cruiser in front!

From Leavenworth we drove over Stevens Pass, something we had not done before and dropped down into the Snoqualmie River valley and headed home.

It was a fun trip that flew by; we both said today that it did not feel like three full weeks. It’s great to have that much quality time together.

Filthy car at the end of the trip

Some statistics from the trip:

Total miles: 5,206 – 2,809 to Indy, 2,397 back

Total days: 21 – 14 driving, 7 staying put (2 Boise, 2 Chicago, 3 Indianapolis)

Longest day: Day 1, 536 miles from home to Boise

Shortest day: Day 12, 197 miles from Chicago to Indianapolis

Total fill-ups: 15

Gallons of gasoline: 256.46

Cost of gas: $993.25

Average cost per gallon: $3.878 (Highest: $4.099 in Easton, WA and Jamestown, ND; Lowest: $3.649 in Great Falls, MT)

Miles per gallon: 21.5 (includes 300 miles that were already on the first tank we bought on the trip)

Highest elevation: 9,200 feet (Bighorn National Forest)

Lowest elevation: 500 feet (Home)

Highest temperature: 103 in Des Moines on July 22

Lowest temperature: 62 in Havre, MT on August 3^rd

Most impressive man-made thing: Mt. Rushmore

Most impressive natural thing: The Grand Tetons in Wyoming

Best thing: Being together

A cell phone camera, as good as they are these days, cannot come close to capturing the beauty and enormity of Montana. Today we drove from Havre to Spokane, WA. Our original plan was to take a route through Glacier National Park. But the day broke cold and rainy and we decided to take a more direct route. Still, the trip was nearly five hundred miles and many, many hours on the road. But what a road! They have two-lane highways with 70 MPH speed limits that cut through some of the widest expanses you’ll ever see.

Coming down a hill between Big Sandy and Fort Benton we felt like we could see forever. And it’s not just the land; there is something about the sky that you don’t quite see anywhere else. We caught up with the Missouri River again in Great Falls. From there we took another state highway that climbed through the mountains and eventually dropped us in Missoula. We really enjoyed this drive.

From there we hit the Interstate again and eventually ended up in Spokane. This is our last night of the trip. We are in a nice hotel, but it will be nice to sleep in our own bed tomorrow.

And Americans too, even two Washingtonians is a filthy SUV. Canada is not far from Havre. Havre itself is about halfway across the state of Montana. We left Minot (North Dakota) mid-morning. The temperature was right around 70 degrees, the lowest (day or night) temperature we’ve seen since the day we left Washington.

The northwest part of North Dakota is oil country. Every few hundred yards you see another small oil well. Sometimes you see drilling derricks preparing a new well. And you see lots of oils services people and trucks all over the place. We rolled into Williston around lunch time and found bumper-to-bumper traffic. Sometimes we hit MacDonald’s for lunch. Then never seem to mind us buying coffees and eating our store-bought cold cuts and fresh fruit. Initially we could not find a parking spot at the local MacDonald’s!

From there we continued west on US-2. Heavy construction slowed us down; at one point the road was gone and we were driving on dirt and gravel. Many of the little towns along the way were boarded up or otherwise closed. We did find a few low-riders in Wolf Point.

We noticed a lot of European names in Montana including; Glasgow, Harlem, (Le) Havre and Malta.  Not sure how that happened…

Eventually we reached Havre and settled in. It was a long day, around 450 miles and most of the day light hours behind the wheel.

Tomorrow will be another long day, but again we will get an hour back when we cross time zones. We saw the geography change slowly over the course of today’s travel; from flat-as-could-be to rolling hills. The change tomorrow will be dramatic as we cross over the Rockies in Glacier National Park. Should be fun!

We wanted to see North Dakota and Montana on the way back home. We chose the more northerly route and that dropped us in Minot, North Dakota. We’re about forty miles or so from Canada. The road from Fargo was flaaaat for the first 90 or so miles. As we got more north and west we ran into rolling hills, some rain and a lot of solitude. We were the only car on the road for many miles. Minot is a small-ish city, maybe 50K people. And they have a great Barnes & Noble!

We have about 1,200 miles to go over the next three days. Tomorrow and Friday will be long days. Fortunately we get a time zone change on both days. We should come close to the Missouri River again in Williston. We’ve been off the interstate since Jamestown, ND. We won’t see another I-something until we hit Spokane.

Oh yeah, us having arrived in Fargo, ND this evening, you were expecting movie references like “You betcha” or “Mr. Lundegaard? Mr. Lundegaard!” But no, we have reached far deeper into cultural irrelevancy to bring you Fargo North, Decoder. He was the goofy detective on “The Electric Company” a 1970’s PBS show for children who had graduated from Sesame Street. They had lots of puns, like, well, Fargo North, Decoder. There are lots of clips on YouTube.

So this was a very long day; our second longest distance but the most time on the road. It should have been shorter but we lost an hour in a construction zone west of Eau Claire, WI and that put us in rush hour traffic in Minneapolis/St. Paul. Otherwise it was an un-eventful day. The temperature and humidity were oppressive in Madison. Both broke about thirty miles out of town. We covered the whole width of Minnesota on a bit of a diagonal. By the west side of the state things were starting to feel a bit more like west than the mid-west including more grazing animals and speed limits greater than 65! And yes, Minnesota has a LOT of lakes.