Our next destination is the posh little town of Bozeman, Montana and then on to Polson, Montana – home to the crystal-clear Flathead Lake, lakeshore cherry orchards and the Annual Flathead Cherry Festival.
After we leave Yellowstone, we spend two nights/ one day in Bozeman, Montana. After five days in the wilderness we are excited to have internet, full hook-ups (camper translation: unlimited hot showers!!) and the comforts of town. It was a short rest stop to do laundry, grocery shop and get DT a haircut! We stay in Sunrise Campground, a small family owned park right on the outskirts of town. We make friends with a family from Louisiana with children Elle’s age and Elle enjoys having some playmates. We enjoy having internet access again, to catch up with family and friends and have access to the tourist information and daily weather reports!
Our one sightseeing expedition in Bozeman is to visit the Museum of the Rockies – which has impressive skeletons/fossils and we enjoy a presentation in the planetarium. We also go for burgers in the town of Bozeman. Bozeman is an upscale town full of restaurants and boutiques.
Then it’s on to Polson, Montana, which is situated on the southern shore of Flathead Lake. It’s a four-and-a-half-hour drive to the Eagle’s Nest RV Resort where we have two days and three nights. It’s a lovely little resort where we have full hookups and cable. After arriving and setting up we immediately drive downtown to the Polson Cherry Festival. The Main Street of Polson is blocked of off and filled with tents – the beginning of the street is exactly what we expected – all sorts of cherry baked goods, including lots of home baked cherry pies! When at the cherry festival, eat cherries – so we purchased a pie. Then we continue down the street to the various art and craft stalls. Kay finds a lovely glass pendant necklace. What a fun small-town festival.
The next day we loll around doing laundry and relaxing in the morning. After lunch, we decide to drive the loop around the lake. We drive along the east shore among the various cherry orchards up to the artsy little town of Big Fork. It was cute, filled with galleries and art shops. The we continue on around the lake – it is deceivingly big and takes a couple hours.
When we get back to Polson, we decide to get BBQ from a place we had seen in town – so we stop by on our way back. We pull up and it’s empty – closed on Sunday. No worries, we had seen another one close to our campground, so we stop there… also closed on Sunday! We give up, we are meant to eat in tonight.
Our second full day we decide to go cherry picking. Our neighbors in the RV Park highly recommended Getman’s Orchard so we decide to go there. The cherry orchards are literally right on the lakeshore – what a stunning setting
We don’t have an address for Getman’s Orchards but when we put Getman’s in our Waze Navigation App it appears to know where to take us. We drive up the east side of the lake, past all the orchards until our navigation announces we have arrived. The problem is there is no orchard. There is nothing. Hmmmm. Waze is usually excellent but on this one – epic fail. We drive back down to the orchards, assuming we’ll spot a sign. We drive until we are almost back in Polson. Nothing. Finally, I look up the address and we use the old-fashioned method of reading numbers on the mailboxes. Success! We find the orchard – someone had parked their car blocking the sign. We park and get buckets and make our way through the orchard picking various fat delicious cherries from the trees. This is Elle’s first fruit picking experience and she thinks it’s great fun. She filled herself and the bucket with cherries! We happily return to the campground with our 5 pounds of cherries.
On the way back to the Airstream, we stop and go down to the lakeshore. The water is cold and crystal clear. Beautiful.
That evening we decide to try for BBQ again. We call and order takeout. They inquire what we want because at 5:30pm they are basically sold out. Fortunately, they have a little pulled pork left and that’s what we want – so we are in luck! Who knew it would be so difficult to get BBQ takeout!
Tomorrow we are onto Glacier National Park!