Red Bus Tour of the Western Side of Glacier National Park

While Lily was here, we wanted to make sure she got to spend some time in the park before she went to Kansas City for school. Since COVID, there has been a strict ticket system to get into Glacier National Park. Having a park pass isn’t good enough. You need to get a daily vehicle entrance pass to go on certain roads during the hours of 6 a.m. and 3 p.m. You can get in outside of those times with your park pass. This will go on until September 10th…when the official end of the high tourist season is over. Then the locals can start to enjoy the park without the crowds. If you can’t get the vehicle passes (they go on sale months ahead of time with a few being released 48 hours prior) you can do a tour of some kind and be able to enter the park. We chose to do a Red Bus tour. These Red Buses are actually serviced and stored within walking distance of our house. They are pretty cool. They are vintage 1930’s red buses with roll back tops. They seat 16 and this fleet of 33 red vintage buses are the one of the oldest fleet of working vehicles in the world. We took a tour from Apgar Village near the West Entrance (about 20 minutes from our house) to Logan Pass (which is the highest point on the Going-To-The-Sun Road, which cuts through the park). It was a little smokey….we have several wildfires burning in our area. A huge storm blew in while we were at Logan Pass….but we had a good time and learned a lot from our driver. I would love to do the East side at some point, as well. Lily also got an ice cream cone with huckleberry ice-cream. The water is crystal clear in GNP…and the mountains are always spectacular.