Once again, I’m picking up where my last summer vacation post left off…West Yellowstone and we’re now headed to Kalispell/Whitefish, Montana, to visit Glacier National Park!
If you missed any other stops on our vacation so far, you can check them all out here…
There weren’t many stops on the six hour drive from West Yellowstone but we found this little gem for our lunch stop, The Stray Bullet.
It was a small breakfast and lunch spot serving guests driving through town. We chatted with our waitress and she said that last year there were seven kids in their school, most of the surrounding areas don’t have cell phone reception, and neighbors are few and far between but they get lots of guests traveling from Glacier to Yellowstone or vice versa. Bowen gave the biscuits and gravy high ratings!
We arrived in Kalispell, Montana, in the late afternoon. We got checked into our hotel-another Springhill Suites that fit all my people well. I will say that if we visit the area again, we won’t stay here. The hotel was just fine but it was located in an area of town that could have been any town. We were between the Lowe’s and a grocery store. This part of town was newer so it had all the typical stores. Nothing bad or negative about the area it just wasn’t the part we ended up loving.
This last leg of our trip was the only part of our trip that felt really affected by understaffing. Almost every restaurant on the trip had signs saying they were short staffed and asked for extra patience but only in this area did we really feel the extra wait.
We drove to downtown Kalispell in hopes of having dinner at a little hole-in-the-wall spot but everything was closed. I think this was just a byproduct of us arriving into town late on a Sunday so we decided to drive to Lakeside, Montana, to check out the water and hopefully have dinner there. I’d heard of Harbor Grille online and from a friend so we waited for a table. The weather and views were gorgeous!
The sun was setting, the weather was nice, and our wait was great. The food was just meh…they were out of a lot of what their menu offers so if I had it to do over, I’d try Tamarack Brewing Company. I heard lots about that place in our short stay in Montana.
When I was working on this trip a family friend told me they were going to Glacier for their summer vacation. We chatted about all they were doing and we actually decided while we were up in this part of the country we should check it out too. Originally our dates didn’t overlap but they had to move some things around and we realized we’d be in the same area for a day so we made some family fun plans.
Tab, Nixon and Bowen met the husband and son bright and early in Lakeside to do some early morning fishing. It doesn’t appear like Bowen was having any fun, does it?
Nixon and Drew have played baseball together for years. They were pumped to meet up in Montana.
If you decide to fish any other day than Monday {womp womp!} there is a local restaurant that will cook your fish for you or you could take it to cook yourself. Since we were in a hotel and the restaurant was closed, they just released everything they caught.
While these guys were having a successful fishing expedition, the girls…
were meeting up in downtown Whitefish to do a little shopping.
We walked into the cute boutiques and checked out all the souvenir shops.
And we grabbed a coffee because nothing says, “Girl’s Day”, like shopping and coffee, am I right?
We met up with the guys for lunch and then our fun continued over at Whitefish Mountain Resort. When we booked this prior to our trip we were a little unsure of how these kids’ activities would be, but let me tell you-my kiddos would say this was one of their favorite things. I know the extra friends helped but this stop was fun.
We bought the adventure passes for the big kids so they had two hours of access to this aerial park. To me this sounded a little long, but they’d have stayed longer if they were allowed. This aerial park was unlike any other we’ve visited because it was built into the side of a mountain and covered with trees.
I don’t know if you can tell, but that boy has a BIG smile on his face!
At one point the adults were sitting at the bottom in tables/chairs where we could see them in just one area of the aerial park. We kept thinking they were gonna be finished and done anytime, but we had to go get them. They were running out of time and they still had passes to the slides.
Ebby Lee takes after her mama and her fear of heights is something I must have passed on. She moved slowly, but she was up there for two hours too!
They had the best time! I’d highly recommend this for kids these ages if you’re in the area!
He’d have stayed for two more hours if we’d have let him.
But they had more things to do! You could ride this chair lift to the top and then take one of two alpine slides down.
Meanwhile, Britty was living her best life with Landri. These two rode the slides and the scenic chair lifts to take in those views!
This crew would highly recommend you stop here if you’re near Whitefish during the summer months!
And then once again, we had a hard time finding a dinner spot. We ended at a hibachi restaurant {it was our third attempt}. Lots of restaurants were closed or closed really early on Monday, many had hours worth of wait times, but we ended our day of fun with friends and plates full of fried rice which was just icing on the cake.
Not only would I recommend you visit Whitefish, but I recommend you doing it with friends!
One more day to share coming soon!
XO
How fun!!! Love that you got to do it with friends too!
http://www.elspethsdaybyday.com
Ohhhhhh! All of my favorite people in one post!!! I loved this one the most!!
In that first picture all of the kids look sooooooooooooooooooo old!!!!!!!!!
That sounds like such a fun day! My middle son is the only one that didn't inherit my fear of heights and LOVES aerial courses while my other two barely tolerate them. I force myself to go up too and conquer that fear even if I too move quite slowly.
Tamarack is fantastic!