Day 25 - Big Fork and Flathead Lake

Woods Bay, 135 miles total and 29.4 mpg. Totals for the trip, 3999 miles, 26.7* mpg. Those are the stats.

Doug slept in, as mentioned yesterday. He (I) did get up at 5 and feed/walk the boys. The left knee has been a bit of a problem for about a day and a half, and it was really a problem after feeding the boys. The ibuprophen helped a little…

Somehow it took us 2 hours from the time I got up, 9, to get to the Echo Lake Café (again), this time for lunch! Lunch was great, just as breakfast was yesterday. I suspect we’ll be back at least once more.


Next on the agenda was a really easy hike – along the Swan River. This is a flat hike on a wide path and it is very popular. Lots of strollers, bikes, runners, etc. The scenery is nice, the river rushes downhill with lots of whitewater (not nearly like Stillwater Creek though). It’s about 4 miles round trip. A good hike, and about all I’m up for today with the bum knee (arthritis).

Then back to the room, and on to circumnavigate the lake. Flathead Lake is roughly 35 miles long and 10 miles wide. We’ve driven around most, if not all of it in pieces, but never just driven around the lake. So we did that, with several detours to see places on the lake shore that seemed interesting. It was a nice drive, occasional splats of rain, but generally speaking very scenic. Interesting the map shows the west side of the lake as being the more scenic route – we disagree, the east side seems much more scenic to us – although both sides, and really the whole drive, are certainly interesting and beautiful.

Back to the room, get cleaned up, and go into Big Fork, the town, to look for food. S-H has researched, and located 4 potential eating establishments, so we go in to walk the street, read menus and make a choice. Which is what we do, and the Big Fork Inn wins the competition. We have a very nice meal there, good food, good service.

Here I digress just a bit. We can’t put our finger on just what it is, but Big Fork is not our cup of tea. It’s a small, very small, town that portrays itself as artisan (if that’s the right word), but it is touristy (if that’s a word). The sidewalks are narrow – we had trouble walking the street! We both had a feeling of discomfort about the place, but couldn’t name a specific reason. Actually, Woods Bay is right – possibly that’s why Big Fork (and Kalispell) aren’t that interesting for us.


After the nice meal, back to the room. We need reservations in Canada, so we spend an hour or so phoning places to find out if they are pet friendly, then if they have a room. We end up with two reservations in Golden, 2 nights, then 6 nights. Looking forward to that, but it’s a ways off.

I may have forgotten something, it’s just after midnight, and I’m off to bed. Goodnight!