Day 6 Tuesday 30 May 2017

Our second day staying at Grouse Lodge and we went to visit Glacier National Park.  The way to see the park is to hop on to a red jammer.  In fact the jammer is the nickname for the vehicles as the transmissions were unsynchronised and so have to be double clutched, otherwise they jammed, not because you are jammed onto the bus.  These Ford buses were all made in 1936 (the same year Betty/Mum/Grandma was born) and they have all been refurbished; except for the one that ran off the cliff in 1971.  The buses can run on either propane or gasoline but not at the same time.

The park has 65 types of mammals, and from what we can see, that consists of one White Tailed Deer and 64 squirrels.

Here is our tour guide Tara wearing her USA shirt.  Tara is Canadian, has worked in Australia and is an excellent tour guide.  We are very lucky to have her.

The above scenes are from the MacDonald Lodge beside the lake. Earlier in the morning the reflections on the lake were perfect.

The Park’s philosophy must be that climate change is a natural process. Our tour guide kept mentioning that if there was a problem, then Mother Nature always balances it out. Luckily, according to “Jammer Tom”, American scientists haven’t found any evidence of human induced climate change. That was lucky. Forest fires are a big thing here and the lass serving behind the bar used to be a fire fighter who would jump out of planes.

After dinner we visited the cemetery and looked at the graves of veterans.  We did manage to see a real Grouse. One veteran was buried with his brother who died when he was only two years old and was buried with him rather than with the other veterans.  Spouses also tended to be buried with their husband veteran.   There was also a grave with only Japanese writing and one veteran had an obvious Japanese name.  There were several sad graves for children who died in infancy.