As a small business person (VERY small…sole proprietor and only person) I joined the Bigfork Chamber of Commerce when I moved to Bigfork in late 2002. The Chamber is active in many community functions and organizes most of them. Decoration Day at Christmas time is one of the many. Coming up are “Clean our Fork” which is a turn out for spring litter pick up – we meet at one of the local members’ for a pancake breakfast, are assigned areas to pick up and off we go. Just like Decoration Day, enough turn out that we “git er done” in short order and then we meet again for lunch… All activities include food and drink – we don’t do anything hungry or thirsty!

It is a fun group! The nature of Bigfork’s topography is such that there is very little “town” housing. Most of us live rurally in the surrounding area. Chamber functions as well as town functions are always well attended.

Once a month, the Chamber has a “Sundowner”. A Chamber business hosts an open house with food and drink, naturally. Starting at 5 p.m. we gather, eat, sip and talk, share announcements about new or expanding services, promotions, upcoming events and finish with a small raffle for prizes donated by the host.

Yesterday evening was this month’s Sundowner, hosted by the Bigfork branch of Rocky Mountain Bank.

The bank is right next to the Chamber office and those poor people in the bank look towards the lake all day while they are working…you can see a bit of the lake past the Dairy Queen sign in the first photo. The Diary Queen gets a bit of the view also as do a number of businesses, including another bank that “step” down the grade along Montana Highway 35.

And that temperature of 26??? It made us all giddy with relief after the last several days of arctic cold. And 26 was at just after 6 p.m. – sunset is 7:40ish right now. We were all smiles and “hey, it is almost Spring” as we gathered.

Although Karl did not come in for the festivities, he did ride along in the Jeep. We arrived home, passing our UPS guy on the way and found he had been to our house…

And he didn’t forget Karl!

Small Town doin’s – I love it all!