Winter vacation in Montana

 We landed in Kalispell, MT, Friday afternoon during a snowstorm.  The plane had to circle the airport awhile to find a break in the snow with visibility improved so we could land.  Dan lives about 20 miles from there, in Whitefish.  We are spending a few nights here with him, catching up on what's going on with our son.

Dan's windowsill garden of succulents seems to be thriving despite the snowbanks on the other side of the glass!

We watched the Whitefish Winter Festival parade from the top of the Great Northern Brewing Company right on the parade route.  Father and son enjoying a brew, and there seems to be some similarity in neckwear!  Snowflakes were falling, as was happening off and on throughout the day.

The Festival theme this year was One Fish, Two Fish, Whitefish.  A lot of Dr. Seuss fun!

Bob made friends with part of the Cindy Lou Who Crew!

We've done some walking around the area on the city trail system.  They are kept very well-cleared, and easy to access.  This picture was down on Whitefish Lake, with the ski resort seen up on the mountain when the clouds lifted.  Not much sunshine to be found Saturday, but we were part of a crowd watching the Penguin Plunge anyway.  Crazy people jumping into crazy cold water!  It made me flinch just to watch!

Warm and cozy at the Taphouse, choosing from their extensive list of beverages.

And there was even some sewing done!  Dan is using his spare time to craft market totes and yoga bags from burlap coffee bean bags.  This little serger, kindly donated for a good cause by Debbie, flew with us on this trip to Montana.  He's using it to finish off the rough edges of the burlap, and sew the linings of regular cotton fabric.  This is working great, but we may have to look for some heavy-duty equipment if he continues with this idea!  He's doing such a good job of teaching himself how to construct these bags.  I've given him some instruction along the way as far as running the machine and understanding the basic construction, but he has a rack of bags already made and ready to sell at some local places, plus at the Farmer's Market in the spring.  He's a quick learner!

We are going to be getting a lot more snow in the next couple of days, we'll hope we can still carry on our plans to snowshoe in Glacier National Park and ski on Whitefish Mountain.
From the National Weather Service for this area:

..WINTER STORM WARNING NOW IN EFFECT UNTIL 11 PM MST MONDAY...
...BLIZZARD WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM THIS EVENING THROUGH
MONDAY MORNING...

* IMPACTS/TIMING: LIGHT TO MODERATE SNOW WILL CONTINUE THROUGH
  THIS MORNING BEFORE ANOTHER EVEN MORE ROBUST WEATHER SYSTEM
  ARRIVES LATER THIS AFTERNOON THROUGH MONDAY.

* LATE TONIGHT THROUGH MONDAY: VERY HEAVY SNOW WILL COMBINE WITH
  INCREASING EAST WINDS TO CAUSE BLIZZARD CONDITIONS. SNOWFALL
  RATES OF 2 INCHES PER HOUR WILL BE LIKELY. ROADS WILL BECOME
  IMPASSIBLE THROUGH MONDAY MORNING. VISIBILITY WILL LOWER TO
  LESS THAN ONE QUARTER MILE. SNOW DRIFTS OVER ROADS WILL MAKE
  DRIVING TREACHEROUS AND SNOW PLOW OPERATIONS DIFFICULT.

* SNOW ACCUMULATIONS: 15 TO 35 INCHES THROUGH MONDAY NIGHT.
  HIGHWAY 2 OVER MARIAS PASS COULD SEE A STORM TOTAL SNOWFALL
  AMOUNT EXCEEDING 50 INCHES.

* WINDS TONIGHT THROUGH MONDAY: 15 TO 25 MPH WITH LOCALLY STRONGER
  GUSTS.

I love how they use the word "robust" to describe the expected storm!

home is good

So nice to be back home, after feeling cooped up in the car for 2 days!  Even though we drove a
l-o-o-n-g time Sunday (about 12 hours or so) that meant that we had an easy day (about 8 hours) on Monday and arrived at home with some time to unpack, start the laundry, mow the lawn and even take a walk!

I forgot to tell you much about our time at Glacier Distillery.  They use cherries in some of their products, and it is prime time for cherries.  Lauren showed us the huge vat of Rainier cherries that were fermenting and bubbling away.  Yes, there are bits of foreign material in there since they do come from a tree, not a lab!  But all that is filtered off so you won't end up with a stem in your cocktail!

I bought a cherry brandy liqueur, Daughter of the Sun, as well as Little Cottonwood which also has some cherry flavor along with other good seasonings.  I had a delicious cocktail at the Whiskey Barn tasting room--Daughter of the Sun mixed with sparkling apple juice (at least I think it was Daughter of the Sun, but to be honest I might be mistaken about that after inhaling all those fermentation fumes!)

And since I have a special place in my heart for a good gin and tonic, I sampled and purchased the Glacier Distilling gin.  I like that fresh flavor, like a little pine tree in a glass!

I'm not sure why the gin doesn't get a beautiful label like the others, there's one more question for me to take back to Lauren.

On our last day of vacation, we had a bird's-eye view of the Flathead River valley.  It was pretty cloudy so the picture isn't the best, but I liked to look all the way over Whitefish, down to Flathead Lake and Columbia Falls just off to the left.

Also, on that last afternoon, we went to Brewfest in the Depot Park in Whitefish.  There were several (12-14?) microbreweries present serving up samples of their brews.  Not only did it taste good, and we had fun meeting more of the Whitefish folks, but the glass was really cute, too!