Exploring with Intuition: Bruck to Canada

7/18/2019

Bidding farewell to the Schotts we headed north. After only one stop, to fill our fuel tank at Costco in Kalispell, we arrived in Whitefish Montana just before noon.

Seeing a combination train station/museum, we had to stop. This unique Bruck (Bus-truck) was parked outside.

The Bruck is a custom designed vehicle built for the Great Northern to replace the old Galloping Goose railcars that served Kalispell from Whitefish. With a door at the same height as a train car, the Bruck served 21 passengers at a time, along with their luggage, from 1950-1972.

The building is still an active Amtrak station, but has plenty of room left over for the local museum.

With a large school group in the museum, we opted to check out the waiting room first.

The luggage scale built into the floor is a mechanical work of art.

As the class left the museum we checked out some of the unique local tools like this huckleberry picker.

We almost bought this in the little shop. If the Glacier National Park mascot was a Ram, it would have made it into our van.

An early diesel Alco RS-1 engine sat in the parking lot. The Stumptown Historical Society restored and painted it in the original Great Northern colors. A plaque said this locomotive was built in 1942, with a 1000 hp engine that delivered a maximum speed of 65 mph.

Moving on from Whitefish we crossed into Canada at Roosville under blue skies. Half an hour later we pulled to the side of the road as rain and hail moved in from the west.

The storm was fast moving, so we were underway again in fifteen minutes. Ten minutes later we were backed into a pretty site in the Kalispell Trail Campground on the shoreline of Lake Koocanusa at Kikomun Creek Provincial Park.

A few minutes after settling in, a front with some serious straight-line winds came through. Our neighbors had just left, so we ran over and rescued their screen tent and lawn chairs before they ended up in the lake. We were really glad we had not deployed our awning.