Woods Bay RV Park, Bigfork, MT
Chapter 1 : The Drive
The drive from Ephrata to Woods Bay, MT was only suppose to be a 5 hour drive. Totally doable. We'd be there a little after lunch. Well that didn't happen. After a bazillion stops, including a 2 hour layover at a Walmart with a Cabela's right next store and me spending a bit more of Royal's money, and then another 45min delay at the Walmart in Polson to pick up fishing licenses, we finally arrived at our campground around 6pm.
Chapter 2 : The Campsite
This campground is pretty small, only about 25 sites, the sites are gravel with kind of grassy area next to it. And ours backs up to a big graveled hill, which is awesome for feeling like you are camping in your own little world, especially when your next door neighbor is camping with you. It's quiet pretty much all day (except for when the marina has live music playing at night) and there are enough trees around to provide shade almost the entire day.
The nighttime sky is so pretty!
Chapter 3 : Fishing
One of the main reasons we chose this RV park to stay in is because they have an attached marina for Royal's dad to keep the boat in. It was literally just down the hill from our campsite.
The first day, Royal chartered a guide to help them learn where the fish might be hiding and what people are here use to catch them. Royal, Fireball, my dad, Jayden, and Willow all went out and the kids proved to have the lucky poles because they each caught 2 lake trout a piece!
This was Willow's very first time out in the fishing boat - the rule for Fireball's boat is the kids have to be 4. Willow liked it well enough, but discovered if she stayed back with me and grandma, she could usually talk grandma into buying her ice cream before lunch. :)
The boys went out every morning, Jayden had to take a break because I implemented a rule of 2 early mornings in a row then he had to take a break, just for the crankiness factor of a kid who won't take a nap. Royal caught 1 fish and my dad caught the rest. Fireball got skunked this trip out. Poor Fireball.
Chapter 4 : Chips
Bringing Norma means there is never a shortage of food. She brought tons of food, which was awesome, but sometimes problematic. If I am going to have bags of chips around, I will have 1, maybe 2 bags of chips and that's it. But I rarely have chips, ask Royal, he'll tell ya it's true because chips are his favorite food of all time. Norma brought 2 huge boxes of chips from Costco. I'm pretty sure Willow loves chips as much as her dad because before breakfast she'd be asking for chips, after breakfast she'd ask for chips, after she had chips, she'd ask for more chips. I'm pretty sure if someone poked a hole in her right now, chips would come pouring out....The chips were gone this morning (hallelujah), the last of them being taken out in the boat, and it resulted in a huge crying fit. Chips Anonymous anyone?????
Chapter 5 : Swimming
The swimming beach was a little jaunt away. Very easy to walk to, but I usually drove the truck down to carrying all our towels, and kayaks, and floating tubes, and goggles, and snorkels, and, and, and..... :)
It has been in the high 80's low 90's the whole time we have been here, so swimming has been on the agenda every day, most times more than once. The water was so, so clear, you could see the rocks on the bottom quite a ways out in the water and it was the perfect temperature I thought. It was a little cold to get into, but once you submerge yourself, it is so refreshing!
Chapter 6 : Kayaking
I bought these sweet kayaks off an online garage sale awhile ago and they got lots and lots of use here at the lake, mostly by Jayden and myself!
Chapter 7 : White Water Rafting
We went white water rafting down the Flat Head River while we were here too. Willow and Norma stayed behind because Norma doesn't like this kind of thing and Willow was too young to go. Willow would of loved it!
We started just below the Kerr Dam and went 8 miles down the river, through 4 different set of rapids including "The Buffalo Rapids" which is the biggest wave in Montana. It was so much fun and afterwards Jayden declared, "I will remember this day FOREVER!!!!" He was pretty nervous before we started, but he had so much fun.
We actually had a bit of excitement on our boat. Heading into "the buffalo", we didn't get positioned right and bounced of a rock, which in turn started sucking us backwards between a couple big rocks and headed down the rapid backwards, but our guide, Faith, got us spun around at the last minute and heading in the right direction. Afterwards my dad says, "Were we suppose to do that?" Faith answered, "Nope!"
Jayden spent a lot of the flat sections jumping out of the boat and getting hauled back in.
Jayden built himself a cage out of the paddles.
Afterwards Jayden was starving and we stopped by a store to grab some bags of ice and Jayden walked out with this huge sandwich, and proceeded to eat most of it.
Chapter 8 : Whitefish
We have visited most of the towns around the lake. We went into Polson for their Cherry Festival and the kids got overpriced hats, marshmallow guns, balloons twisted into Smurfs, cherry pies and cherry ice cream. You know, support the local economy!
We've also gone into Bigfork and Kalispell for shopping. But today, we headed a bit farther and went through the town of Whitefish and up to the Whitefish Ski Resort. Royal's parents headed home today (a day before us), so it was just the 4 of us and Papa. Royal had seen a brochure that said the resort had some summer activities up there besides mountain biking, although after watching some of the bike riders going down the trails, I kinda want to try it!
First, we rode up a gondola to the top of the mountain for some lunch!
View from the gondola
And our view from our table at lunch!
I've got to imprint these mountains in my brain because we are heading back to the land of flat and wide open spaces!
On the ride back down from the top, Willow got brave and we sat in a chair lift - so much better. The gondola was hot and stuffy, but the chair left you out in the open (even if I was kinda panicked about Willow sliding under the waist bar) and the view was unbeatable!
We also went down the Alpine Slide, twice! It was this awesome toboggan track that curved and dipped it's way down the mountain, and then you ride a chairlift back up to the top of it. Willow was too little to ride her own, so we rode together. (no pictures of us, since I was the picture taker. :( ) But Jayden thought it was awesome and went as fast as he could down the hill. Dad and Royal, well, I'll let the picture show what they thought of it. :)
We start heading east again tomorrow toward Wichita, but we had so much fun while we were here. We would totally come back, but I'm guessing that Royal has many more lakes and rivers he wants to camp and fish on!
