The biggest adventure of my life

“All aboard!” I stepped up to the bus driver and gave him my handful of tickets. He looked them over, tore off the necessary one, and handed them back to me.

He laughed and said that I was going a long way and it’s going to take you a long time to get there. Western Montana…isn’t that the Big Sky Country? I said I really didn’t know but I was soon, at least after five long days, going to find out. 

He quickly finished with the other passengers, took his driving seat and shut the bus door with a pneumatic whoosh. It was June 1963 and at 19 I had just finished my first year of college and on my way in a modern covered wagon to begin the biggest adventure of my life. 

I had spent enough hot, humid, tornado ridden summers in Oklahoma to know that I had had enough of them.

Dozens of Roy Rogers and Gene Autry cowboy movies, plus a dose of Horace Greeley’s call to “Go West, young man” had made up my mind to do just that.

 Back in those days the Interstate Highway System was more of a dream than a reality and cross country travel was primarily made on what William Heat Moon called the “blue highways. 

They were two lanes, slow, and much less safe than the Interstates would come to be. However, they were also much more scenic and sure to take one off of the beaten path. 

Regardless of how I got there it was going to take a lot of days on a Greyhound bus and cover a total of 1,800 miles. It was also to take me to a world I had only experienced in the movies or National Geographic Magazine.

 I was blessed with an uncle who liked both to travel and to read. On one of his visits a few years earlier he suggested I read an article in Colliers Magazine about working in Rocky Mountain Park In the summer. 

I took his advice and read it. Unbeknownst it at the time that article would change my life.  Remembering that article I sent off applications to various national parks as my first year of college was coming to a close. 

My first choice was for Rocky Mountain, but a place called Glacier National Park in western Montana offered me a position first. I jumped at the chance, signed the contract, and sent it right back. I was to be a busboy at Swiftcurrent Motor in the Many Glacier Valley of Glacier. 

I didn’t even know what a busboy did and where Swiftcurrent even was. I was going out West and that was all that mattered. Ironically enough about a week later I received a similar offer as housekeeper in Rocky Mountain Park.

True to my word as a contract signer I opted to stay with Glacier. That decision was to determine the direction of my life for the next sixty years. 

After a long night’s bus ride I arrived in Denver the next morning. I changed busses and headed west to Salt Lake City, but not before loading up on beer in Denver. Beer at 19 was legal in Colorado and I took advantage of the situation. 

Never do that and get on a bus with no restroom and a long way between stops. After some miserable and anxious moments I had learned my lesson…almost the hard and embarrassing way. 

My fifth grade teacher in Oklahoma was Mormon to the core and while she never discussed her religion with us she did fill us in on the history of the Mormon trek to the Salt Lake region of Utah.

 So after a long sleepless night at the Salt Lake bus station and a quick breakfast I took the grand tour of the Mormon Temple and Tabernacle complex. Interesting to say the least, but I still remained a nominal Presbyterian. Day three would put me into Great Falls, but not until I traveled through the Montana mining town of Butte. 

At that time Butte and the Berkley Pit were in full blown operation and the area was still the wildest and woolliest place in the state. The place seemed so rough that it scared me a little; an attitude I would latter discard as I made friends from Butte and got to know the place.

The first three days of the trip were made in perfect weather and through the bus windows one could see why it was called Big Sky Country as the sky seemed to go on forever. 

The end of day three found me in Great Falls with an overnight layover and a mid morning bus departure. 

I had had it and got a hotel. Sunday morning was rainy, snowy, dark, windy, and miserable. The clouds were about three feet above my head. As I spent more time in Montana I learned that the weather was just normal for that time of the year. My first three days of bus travel were on pretty new and comfortable Greyhounds, but this one taking me from Great Falls to someplace called East Glacier Park was old, dilapidated, and soon to be headed to that last great Greyhound kennel in the sky. 

I just sat back in my seat and watched it snow and blow for the next three hours. Finally, we pulled into East Glacier and I got my first glimpse what I thought would be the majestic mountains of Glorious Glacier. 

The weather was so bad all one could experience where the mountains were supposed to be was snow, rain, fog and wind. 

I would have to take someone’s word that they were really there. I checked in at Glacier Park Lodge and was told I would be taken to Swiftcurrent in the morning. I was bedded down in a dorm room that was straight out of a Stephen King novel… I was also told to keep an eye on my things so the pack rats didn’t carry them off. 

After an interesting night’s sleep I awoke the next morning, dressed, and stepped out doors. They say one never gets a second chance to make a first impression but that was not true in this case. In place of yesterdays bleak weather there was bright sun, clear skies and the most majestic snow covered mountains that I had ever seen. I swear it was like Dorothy seeing Oz in color for the first time. 

After a quick breakfast I, and several other new employees, boarded one of the old red busses used to take guests around the Park. 

The trip to Swifftcurrent only took a couple of hours, but what a ride it was. We traveled with the top down and just let the scenery wash over us. It just got better and better. We entered the Many Glacier valley, passed by the grand hotel with the same name and finally ended up at Swifcurrent Motor Inn, which is located at the end of the valley road.

For the next three and a half months I would call home a very rough cabin with a sink with cold running water, a bare light bulb for light, and a cast iron stove for heat. The bathroom and shower facilities were located about a 100 yards from the cabin. I would grow to love it as nothing before or since.

Chris Ashby spends his summers as a shuttle bus driver in East Glacier Park. He is a frequent contributor to the Hungry Horse News.