Riding the Reds - Passengers come together for ultimate park experience

On any given day, the visitors who climb aboard Glacier National Park’s red buses offer a colorful cross-section of life.

For a few hours they share their own stories and compare vacation notes in between the driver’s narration about the park’s splendor.

On July 23, Charlie and Beverly Gaussiran of Sun City Center, Fla., were working on their “bucket list” of things they want to do before they die. Riding a red bus and visiting Glacier National Park was one of those things.

“America’s so beautiful, but some people don’t take the opportunity to see it,” said Beverly, ticking off the places they’d already been, such as Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, Amish communities in Indiana and the Mall of America in Minneapolis.

She figured they had driven past a thousand miles of cornfields.

Charlie, a Louisiana native, was anxious to see snow. Maybe that’s because he spent a fair amount of time in Antarctica during his years in the U.S. Navy.

“I have a glacier named after me,” he noted. “Google it, you’ll see.”

Sure enough, Gaussiran Glacier is located in the eastern part of Antarctica and according to Wikipedia was named after Lt. C.D. Gaussiran, a U.S. Navy pilot with the VXE-6 detachment at Darwin Glacier Field Camp in the late 1970s.

As one might expect, he was anxious to see Glacier’s glaciers and was unabashedly delighted as snow came into close view near Logan Pass.

Joe Campisi of Philadelphia looked like a tough guy with his buff physique, crew cut and gold chains around his neck, but he was nurturing his softer side by taking his 15-year-old daughter Darla on a Montana vacation.

“My two boys said this was too boring. They call me mountain man,” he said, shaking his head as he boarded a red bus at the Apgar Transit Center. “They don’t know what they’re missing.”

Darla, polite and soft-spoken, said she’s always shared her dad’s love of the outdoors.

“He and I just love this,” she said at the Logan Pass parking lot.

“Yeah, she’s my nature girl,” Campisi beamed. “This tour outdid my thoughts about what it would be. Glacier is its own unique place.”

Somewhere near the Continental Divide, Campisi was sharing tips about Philadelphia cheesesteak sandwiches with his fellow passengers, giving them the inside scoop on how to make the best version of the famous Philly delicacy.

In one of the back seats, Ron DeTemple of Huntington, W.Va., spouted encyclopedic knowledge about the Marshall University football team.

When he found out the Inter Lake photography intern was attending The University of Montana, he razzed the photographer about UM’s 1996 loss to Marshall, saying he was going to stop by the college in Missoula to get a look at the “runner-up” trophy.

It was good-natured ribbing, of course, and DeTemple is rightfully proud of his Thundering Herd football team that he noted “came back from the ashes” after a 1970 plane crash killed nearly the entire team. The only game he has missed in umpteen years was the day his daughter got married.

DeTemple and his wife Susan were “out West” for a couple of weeks because Susan had a hankering to see some rodeos. He said the terrain and the people really weren’t that different from West Virginia, only the mountains were bigger.

“I’ve notice the friendliness of the people,” he said.

Glacier’s red buses have been giving visitors the pleasure of each other’s company since they began winding their way up and down Going-to-the-Sun Road in 1936.

With the canvas top rolled back on a sunny day, passengers are apt to “ooh” and “ahhh” as the road climbs toward Logan Pass. The awe is palpable, the camaraderie among strangers unforced and congenial.

The historic fleet is operated by Glacier Park Inc., the park’s concessionaire. Tours vary in length and route.

For more information and a schedule, go to www.glacierparkinc.com and click on the red bus tour and shuttle brochure.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.