Thursday in Montana

Thursday in Montana
The paddle boarders returned at about 11:30. Neal did not have great success but he did have a good time. Gabriel stepped off the dock on to his paddle board and never even got wet. He did not get that grace from me.
We headed out for our red bus ride in the park. We stopped for lunch in a place called the Night Owl with a very full parking lot. The food was pretty good but the people watching was the high point of the meal. We certainly found the headquarters for local color. We were all busy listening in to other conversations that were totally fascinating.
Then we were headed back to the park and Lake McDonald to get our red bus.
The red busses are also called Jammer busses. We found out that the drivers are actually the jammers named for the way they used to have to push into gear before the gears were synchronized. The bus we were in was built in 1937 or at least the body was. In 2002 Ford rebuilt them with new chassis engines and transmissions. Our driver was named Jim and he gave us a lot of fun facts. We visited a lot of places we had already seen only now there was heavy smoke and haze from local wild fires. The wind had changed and nothing was nearly as clear as the first part of the week. I am glad we got plenty of pictures when the weather was clear.
We saw a family of wild goats. They were literally climbing straight up a mountain. And we stood watching them for a while. There were four, a male, female, and two youngsters. The adults were about 40 inches high at their shoulders. They were just ignoring us. We thought we might see some in the parking lot at Logan’s Pass because we were the last bus out and the goats come and lick the antifreeze. I wonder if they then become Mountain High Goats.
We returned to the lodge around 8:00 pm and got our car and drove home. I think Neal really enjoyed a time to not be driving and the open bus gave us great views.
We returned to the condo and ate left over ribs from the farmers market and nationally acclaimed pi from Lula’s. We sat outside and enjoyed the quiet.
We ended the day with a little TV. Gabe fell asleep on the couch.