Touring

Touring by Bonnie Zahn Griffith

Pastel on Paper

11" x 14"

15" x 18" (framed, under glass)

From a show at the Hockaday Museum titled "For the Love of Glacier: Paintings and Photography by Bonnie Griffith and L.R. Newman." Bonnie posthumously collaborated with her distant relative, the late photographer L.R. Newman. Griffith grew up admiring the photos of L.R. Newman’s trips to Montana and Glacier, which reminded her of her own family ranch in Central Montana and her own connection to Glacier. In 2021, she decided to create a new body of work in response to specific photos of special locations.

Going-to-the-Sun Road is the only road that traverses Glacier National Park, Montana, crossing the Continental Divide through Logan Pass. Construction began in 1921 and was completed in 1932. A fleet of vintage 1930s red buses, modernized in 2001 and called Red Jammers, or simply "Reds", continue the tradition of offering guided tours along the road. The original bus drivers became affectionately known as "Gear Jammers" or simply "Jammers" since they had to jam the manual gearbox into low to safely negotiate the steepest road sections. Thirty-three of the original buses were rebuilt with flexible-fuel engines which operate mainly on propane but can use gasoline, and with automatic transmissions, making the Jammer name archaic. Modern-style shuttle buses for shorter trips and Blackfeet tour buses operate on the road as well.