Big Fork, MT

Wednesday, September 18

I have to say, Whitefish Montana is the first town we’ve visited on this trip that I’m excited to come back to someday. I wish we would have been able to visit Whitefish Mountain Resort and take the kids down the Alpine Slide or go zip-lining while we were here. Andi and I are finding September to be a weird in-between season — summer activities are over and winter (snow) activities haven’t started yet. It’s a nice time of year to travel because there are less crowds, but there also aren’t as many places open for business.

For our last day in Whitefish, Andi and I planned to take the kids biking from downtown Whitefish, around Whitefish Lake, and end at Big Mountain. Maybe even do some hiking at the ski resort. Unfortunately, it was raining and in the low 40’s when we woke up that morning.

After breakfast, Tory worked on school independently and I attempted to teach Aden but he wasn’t cooperating. I was getting frustrated and our lessons were going nowhere, so we hit pause on the schoolbooks and decided to pack up the RV, move on to a new location, and try school again later. As a parent who is also his teacher, I’ve learned that I need to walk away and breathe in those frustrating moments. I need time to remember that he’s five-years-old and that he learns differently than Tory does.

I think we were all in a funk that morning. We left Whitefish a bit on the grumpy side without a plan for what we’d do for the day or where we’d stay that evening. As Andi drove the RV through the nearby city of Kalispell, I saw a sign for Kalispell Kreamery and decided to call and ask if we could take a tour of their dairy farm. Surprisingly, the owner said yes and invited us to stop by anytime! Andi liked the idea of touring the farm, but wasn’t super thrilled to learn that we’d already passed the farm as we left Whitefish. We decided to back track anyway.

Even though we call “the dairy state” of Wisconsin home and dairy farms are nothing new to us, I never grow tired of visiting them to see where our food comes from. It’s an awesome learning experience for the kids to see the process first-hand, and also to listen and ask a farmer questions about what they do.

The owner of Kalispell Kreamery introduced us to their 500 head of cattle. “The girls,” as she called them, produce milk for cream-on-top milk, greek yogurt, ice cream, creamer, and cold brew coffee products sold by the farm. Kalispell Kreamery believes in keeping milk as natural as possible. “Milk is perfect when it comes straight from the cow,” the owner explained. “It’s everything that is done with it afterwards that degrades it.” She said they work to keep the milk as natural as possible. All of their milk is pasteurized but not homogenized which allows the cream and the milk to separate.

Next, we toured the milking parlor. The owner said the cows are milked at 6:00am and 6:00pm, 7 days a week.

We also toured the production facility where the milk is bottled. Tory and Aden were particularly interested in this part of the process. “Where do you get those red caps for the milk?” Aden wanted to know.

We purchased a few pints of milk and a quart-size jug of chocolate milk, greek yogurt cups in plain, vanilla and honey flavors, three bottles of cold brew, and a t-shirt from the farm. Then, we thanked the owner for showing us around. What a great stop that was!

It was still rainy and cold outside, so we decided to continue further south Kalispell to Montana’s Swan River Valley. Andi found a campsite for us at Wayfarers / Flathead Lake State Park near Big Fork, Montana. Once we arrived there, we hung out in the RV for a little downtime and then drove the RV back into the town of Big Fork to hike the Swan River Nature Trail.

The 2 1/2 mile Swan River Nature Trail was a flat trail that followed the banks of the Swan River. The kids weren’t very excited about walking until Andi told them there was a geocache along the trail. That got them moving!

We didn’t have any trinkets on us for the geocache, so we left our Kalispell Kreamery sticker in the box. Tory signed our names to the log and then we continued on the trail until it started to rain again.

The many faces of Aden … this kid is such a character! If he’s not driving us crazy, he’s making us laugh.

After our hike, we returned to our campsite at the state park. A few more campers had arrived since we left earlier that afternoon, but not many. For the most park, the restaurants and shops in the town of Big Fork were closed for the winter season.

Andi grilled pork chops and brussels sprouts for dinner, which was a big hit with everyone. Surprisingly, we ha quite a few T.V. channels using our antenna, so the kids watched Molly from Denali on PBS before we called it a night. Though, it wasn’t a very restful one. Tory was up coughing most of the night which meant that we were all awake at 1:00am, 2:00am, and 4:00am listening to her. Traveling while sick is no fun. I hope she gets better soon, and that the rest of us don’t catch whatever bug she has!