Whitefish was cooler than we expected it to be. Actually… to be honest, we really didn’t know what to expect. A Canadian described Whitefish to us as being “Honky Tonky”. So our minds went straight to country music and cowboy hats.
I think the only “honky tonky-ness” I experienced was the architecture of some of the downtown buildings. The have an old wild west feel, but nothing too hokey. Really, Whitefish is quite a nice town. Beautiful homes, great downtown area and the locals were nice.
We needed to eat and get some work and laundry done so found a place to get all of these things done; the Pin & Cue.
It’s a catch-all building with a restaurant, bowling alley, arcade, bar & laundromat. BONUS: they had decent wifi. Which has NOT been the easiest to acquire.
For breakfast, we ordered the taco browns and they did not disappoint.
After breakfast, Jay checked in with work and I caught up with some laundry.
We piled our now clean clothes back into the Airstream, at which time we realized we had 2 problems.
1. One of our top vent lids broke off on our way into Whitefish. 🙁
2. We had no place to stay that night…
We called a bunch of RV campgrounds in the area to find a place to stay. This proved to be rather difficult considering we were at the height of tourist season and very close to the West entrance of Glacier National Park.
Luckily, Mountain View RV Park had dry camping available for that night and full hookups the next night. Dry camping is just a fancier way of describing a parking spot. It would do. The wifi wasn’t so great, so we left our Airstream while we went for coffee + internet use at Montana Coffee Traders downtown.
We walked around downtown and jumped in and out of a few shops. At which point I had a very momentous event happen… the purchasing of my first pair of Chacos.
That evening we headed over to Spencer Mt. We had heard from a friend that these trails were worth checking out.
As we pulled in, we noticed a guy with his arm in a sling, sweating bullets and looking rather pale. Immediately we jumped out of the truck and it became clear to us that he had dislocated his shoulder. He and his family are from Calgary, and he explained he didn’t quite make a double on the trail, Otter Pop.
His two young sons were also there and his had wife run back up the mountain to retrieve his bike. We helped them load the bikes into their truck, looked up the nearest hospital and gave his wife the directions.
Directly after they had left an SUV with Washington plates pulled in. Chris hails from Spokane and right off the bat we just sorta just decided to all ride together. He’s one of the owners of a bike shop out in Spokane called Bike Hub.
I was still taking it easy due to my fall back in Fernie and we just saw a guy with his shoulder dislocated…so needless to say, I was glad Jay had someone he could ride faster with.
It’s just so refreshing to meet new people in new places – and be able to share an experience, like mountain biking, together.