Monster Bus Tours

Traveling the magnificent Icefields Parkway in the Canadian Rockies one of the prime attractions is the opportunity to actually ride a bus across a glacier.  Now I've ridden a lot of buses in my day through such weird places as Jersey City and Hoboken, but even in the occasional winter storm none of them ever took me across a glacier.

Needless to say, these are not your ordinary bus.  They are sort of a cross between a bus and a monster truck with eight-wheel drive.

Here's a picture:

A number of these vehicles - known as Brewster Ice Explorers- were built in Canada for use on glacier tours but one is actually in service in Antarctica.

Here's a close-up of one of the tires:

Talk about a wide tread...

The tour actually takes you out onto a portion of Canada's Columbia Icefield known as the Athabasca glacier.  It starts with a ride down a thirty-degree slope over a glacial moraine (basically a huge pile of gravel created by the glacier's motion)  which is a little scary even when one is informed that the vehicle has four forward gears: low, lower, even lower and lowest.  Nevertheless, one is deposited safely in the middle of the glacier for a short romp around the ice.

Michelle - romping on the ice

As you can see from this panorama of our view from where we stood on the glacier, it's just a magnificent spot set amid ice fields and mountains and I would recommend a trip up the Icefields Parkway and a stop at the Athabasca glacier to anyone.

Welcome to the USA - Watch Out for the Cows

So as part of our recent vacation to the Canadian Rockies, we wanted to include a visit to Glacier National Park just over the border in Montana.  This necessitated a drive down a two-lane country road in Alberta Canada which led us to a tiny border crossing in the middle of nowhere.  The Immigration/Customs guy examined our passports and waved us through, cheerfully saying: "Welcome to the US and watch out for the cows."

Watch out for the cows?  Had some bovine coup taken place during our short absence from the homeland? Well, no, he meant it literally.  Apparently the ranchers in Northern Montana are not particularly diligent about maintaining their livestock fences.  For the next several miles of two-lane country road we shared the right-of-way with numerous steers of various breeds who wandered aimlessly across the pavement and along the shoulders of the road.

Yup...Watch out for the cows

Eventually we reached a more traveled road where the fences were kept up and the wandering beef menace was no more.