Winnebagos, weddings, and whitecaps. Glacier has more than mountains!

Origin date: July/Aug 2025

This year, for those Red Bus drivers on the east side, a new tour was added that goes down to the Two Medicine area of Glacier Park. You basically end up with two hours of highway driving outside of the park boundary and see very little of traditional Glacier (that people expect).

I hated these tours at first, until I realized that many people had never seen the prairies of the northern Great Plains. They were amazed. And when I finally took a good look out the window, they were right. I adjusted my commentary accordingly, and although it was exhausting to do two of these a day, they were a nice change from the normal tour routine.

Stupid people with vehicles over the 21-ft length limit on the Sun Road are not rare. I normally see it off hours, when traffic is nonexistent or sparse. But never a 35 ft motor home eastbound in the middle of the day. Someone reported it, and the rangers were waiting for them at Logan Pass.

I don’t know how they got this thing across the Wall and the Arches. It must have crowded every car off the road. I do know he got a citation. And whatever else you give a foreign national, with no driver’s license, in a rented RV, who did not speak a word of English. Yeah, the things you can’t make up.

The beautiful thing about living in Beargrass (at least one of them) is that you are only about 20 minutes from St Mary Lake. Sometimes in the evening, I find my way to Sun Point and watch the storm clouds of the day swirl and fade to black as the night comes on.

I love Sun Point. The views, the history, the fact that this place NEVER changes. Pull up photos from 100+ years ago, and those incredible mountains have stayed the same. Which is why when I see something I’ve never seen in all my years in the Park, I just have to share.

That’s right. There were FOUR separate Bride and Groom combos up there, all jockeying for position to get their wedding photos taken in the fading light and wind. You have to be kidding me. But let’s unpack this a little more.

I’ve been driving the Red Bus for four seasons. I’ve been hiking this park for literally decades. All days of the week. All times of day and night. And I would have to say that I saw more bridal photography on and off the Sun Road in Glacier Park this summer than I have seen in my entire life combined.

They were everywhere this year. At Logan Pass, all the mountain view pull-outs, the west side tunnel parapets, and even the meadows at Two Dog Flats. At all times of day. Morning, afternoon, or even a couple at 8pm at the Big Bend in a rain squall. So dark I thought it was a bear crossing the road (not sure why the bride was in a black wedding dress – must be a second marriage story there somewhere).

But I do have a theory. With the shortage of rangers this season, I think the word went out to the professional photographers that they could get away with some gorilla photo ops sans permit with little chance of getting caught. Because otherwise, I would have never seen THIS is a national park. Just because it’s in nature, don’t mean it’s natural.

St Mary Lake is literally defined by wind. The surface is whitecaps 10 times more often than it is anything resembling flat or remotely glassy. Really? You couldn’t tell from some of my more glorious paddles.

I got a lot of miles on that lake this summer. And I had some amazing photographs of reflections, the fauna and flora, and intense moments of deafening quiet and absolute calm.

This is the St Mary that is the norm. This is why the rangers say make sure your craft can either take a 3-foot wave or is at least self-bailing. Because this wind can come up fast and blow for days on end. You can’t even take shelter on Wild Goose Island if you get caught out there.

So when I have those magical moments out on the lake, I know I’m playing the long game of give and take. And I’ve taken a lot. I just hope I have enough to pay the bill when it comes due. Being in debt to Glacier is never a place you want to be. And I’ve got a big tab.

So there you go. Some random snippets of some random stuff that only GoatBoy could bring to you. Ah, the weird stuff I come across that I don’t share would take me a lifetime to write.

GB out!

And Patrick sucks. But I kind of wonder if his hair would look as good as that gal’s veil in the wind up there on Sun Point. Hmmmmm.