The Whitefish Winter Carnival

Today was our last day in Whitefish, MT, our last day in the States until April and our first day off since we left Missoula.

Normally, Saturday is show day. Sometimes we'll have a show on Friday, but this week, we only had a show on Friday. One show for the whole week and one whole day off for us before we head north again for Alberta.

Somehow, we were fortunate enough to find ourselves in Whitefish for their Winter Carnival, which is quite a big deal. We still don't know what the carnival is for but we celebrated all the same. We started the day with a few errands. We considered driving to the city beach to watch the Penguin Plunge but it was raining and we wanted to sleep in anyways.

We heard that parking would be a challenge and headed downtown mid-morning to find ourselves someplace to park and get some breakfast (a Parmesan herb and cheddar bagel for me!). This left us with quite a few hours to kill before the Winter Carnival parade began at 3, so we did some more shopping and wandering. We visited a local chocolate shop and had huckleberry truffles (EVERYTHING is huckleberry here. Have I mentioned that yet? Because it is the truth... More huckleberry to come). P.S. Yes, I know I didn't have just a regular old chocolate truffle, it shocked me too.

We did some more wandering until we realized that we had never visited the local brewery. Well, wasn't this just a stroke of genius! Being only about 100 yards away, we headed right in. We figured we would get some of the Great Northern Brewing Company's Wild Huckleberry beer, but we needed to be sure so we started off with a sampler platter of all of their beers. Sample we did, eventually coming to the conclusion that yes, we would have the huckleberry beer. We opted out of getting their special 20 year anniversary two-pint refillable mug just so everyone knows. We planted ourselves at the steadily filling bar and worked our way through the beer and a couple of plates of chips and queso before heading out for the parade.

Even after standing out in the rain for several hours at this parade, I still have no idea what it is about. I know that there is a king and queen and that vikings and yetis are involved but other than that... nothing. Apparently the yetis come and kidnap girls sometimes... We didn't get kidnapped but a yeti did get awkwardly close. There are also viking women who will kiss people on the cheek, leaving big lip marks and draw Vs on their faces. The theme was honoring the veterans this year so there was lots of camo and applauding. Mandy mostly cared about the candy that was being passed out -- although we also got free toothbrushes. At one point, a girl road by on a horse and asked her mother, who was standing next to us, if she would take her beer because it was spilling on her and she pulled a can of beer out of her coat pocket. Ok then...

We left a little early because we were absolutely soaked, but happy we had come.

See? Happy!

Post-parade, we drove to Kalispell looking for somewhere Mandy could get her hair cut. With every place either closed or full, we had to return to Whitefish looking the same as we'd left it (Mandy was, however, able to find a new band for her FitBit, so it was not a lost cause entirely). We tried our second Whitefish pizza joint, Jersey Boys (strangely enough, the first pizza place we visited this week was Second Street Pizza) and got a white pizza which smelled, as Mandy described, like heaven had farted. It was delicious and we ate the entire thing.

So, goodbye Whitefish, goodbye America! Tomorrow we leave for Rockyford, Canada and won't be back Stateside until April!

Peace and love.

Mermaids take Whitefish 2015