Rubber Ducky Resort & Campground – A family campground located in Warren, near Winnipeg, Manitoba

This year may go down in history as one of the wettest in more ways than just the weather. We set new a record for the number of days the pool was open. 157 days to be precise which translates to over 5 months of swimming. And some people think Manitoba is all about cold and snow. We are doing our part to bust that myth. 

Today, however, was a sad day in Duckville – the pool has now been put down for it’s long winter’s nap

On the bright side at least it was another warm, sunny October day and it looks like there are still a few more to come. This Saturday is our annual Thanksgiving Potluck. Looking forward to more yummy food and good company. You may recall that on the Thanksgiving Friday last year we had a nice dump of snow. I wasn’t expecting too many people out but we have a lot of die hard campers at the duck and we had about 8 families stay overnight and approximately 40 for supper. Hopefully without snow this year we will have a lot more people around.

I just got some pictures that were taken earlier this summer that really show just how much everybody (and everydog) loves the train.

I think that he actually went  for a ride around the campground on the train too.

And it’s true. We are heading into October with our pool open and heated to 80F. We were originally thinking that last weekend would be the end of the swimming season, but with the amazing weather this week we just had to go one more weekend. Even if you already have the camper put to bed for the winter, you can still come out for the day and enjoy the pool – only $13 for the day (up to 6 people).

It has been a great fall so far at Rubber Ducky. Everyone is able to relax, mingle and enjoy our last few camping weekends. As the nights have been getting cooler more people tend to migrate towards the rec building in the evenings.  From an owners perspective it is really nice to see everyone able to get along and enjoy each other’s company. From a personal perspective it would be more enjoyable if I had a little more luck and might actually win a few card games. (Or maybe I just need to learn to cheat better lol)

We started out this spring with only 5 duckies and now we are up to 17 this fall. At least I think that is how many, it is hard to get them all to stay still so that I can count. They had 8 wild ducks visiting with them this morning. The whole crew was swimming around in the big pond. Everyone was happily enjoying the sunrise until the wild ones spotted me and took off  😦  The boy ducks are just starting to get their fall colours with their heads turning to kind of a purplish, greenish color. It seems to change depending on how the light is shining.

I hope everyone is able to get their ducks in a row and get outside to enjoy the fabulous, fall day.

We had a couple special visitors for Open Farm Day on Sunday:

A big thank you to our neighbors, Chris and Dave, who came for a walk with Crash and Snuffy. This was the first time that Crash (the goat) had been on a leash or even off their property and he did quite well.  Everyone got a chance to give them a little pet and a treat of fresh grass.  The rest of Open Farm Day also went quite well. I lost track, but think we probably had about 25 carloads of people come out. It was a benefit having another farm within a mile of us. Pretty much everyone that stopped here was also stopping down the road at Riddell’s. I have seen some reports that this will become an annual event, so we will have to start thinking up some new ideas for next year.

Last night was the 9th annual Interlake Tourism Association’s Celebration of Stars.  Last year we had a two hour drive to get to the dinner in Steep Rock, so it was certainly a nice treat to have only a 10 minute drive to the Hitchin’ Post in Grosse Isle.  As always Kyle and staff put on a good spread and it was an enjoyable evening of good food and good company. This is also an awards ceremony with 8 different categories. The winners of the Interlake region are then entered into the categories for the Travel Manitoba awards held in 2011. I would like to congratulate the nominees and winners in the following categories:

Non Member Interlake Award – Winner – Teulon Truck and Tractor Pull; nominees were Maple Creek Steak House, Pioneer Quest Cabin Tours, Miami Beach Campground, Woodlands Pioneer Museum.

Service Excellence Award – Winner – Danny’s Whole Hog BBQ and Smokehouse; nominees Country Harvest Inn/Broadvalley Catering, Rubber Ducky Resort, and Whytewold Emporium

Marketing Excellence Award – Winner – Narrows West Lodge and Developments; nominees Country Harvest Inn/Broad Valley Catering, Danny’s Whole Hog BBQ and Smokehouse and Riverton Chamber of Commerce.

Sustainable Tourism Award – Winner Gimli Art Club Sea Wall Gallery; nominees Arborg and District Multicultural Heritage Village

Partnership Award – Winner – West Interlake Trading Company; nominees Manitoba Highland Gathering

Product Development Award – Winner – Whytewold Emporium; nominees DareDevil Design “New Selkirk Enterprise”,  Gimli Art Club Sea Wall Gallery, Sharon Cote “Our Place” Historic Tour of RM.

Volunteer of the Year Award – Winner – Pat Eyolfson, Cochair of the Arborg 7 District Mulitcultural Heritage Village; nominees Barb Gluck, wrote Sea Wall Gallery book for Gimli Art Club

Interlake Award of Distinction – Winner, Iclandic Festival of Manitoba; nominees Chad Olafson, Narrows West Lodge & Developments;  Gail Spencer Lamm, Tourism Coordinator West Interlake Trading Co, Oak Hammock Marsh Interpretive Centre

I wish all the winners good luck at the Manitoba awards. It would be great to see someone from the Interlake win the provincial award. If you would like to find out more information on any of the winners or nominees check out http://www.interlaketourism.com

How did it suddenly become September. It seems like just  a week ago we were talking about the May Long and now poof it is September long. Even though there is still lots of camping time left, sadly this weekend is the unofficial end to camping in Manitoba as many people make this their last outing. I am hoping to change that with our 5th anniversary fall specials.  If you are not part of our enewsletter list or haven’t found us on Facebook yet you can find the newsletter details on our website http://www.rubberduckyresort.com/Newsletter.page. There are lots of great deals and I will also be adding more and some last minute super saver specials along the way. This fall marks  5 years since we had our first guests staying with us so I am putting on some extra anniversary specials to celebrate.

Last year we were able to keep our pool open until approx Sept 27 and hopefully we are able to do the same this year. Although many campgrounds shut down their pool shortly after the September long we keep our open as long as possible. We all know how much more fun the camping trips are when the kids get to spend their day in the pool instead of saying “I’m bored”.

The rain on Saturday kind of put a damper on our activities. We still had around 8 groups doing the scavenger hunt, but I think we could have had more if the sun had been shining. It was still fun even if we did get wet though. I will have to start coming up with some ideas for next year. The long weekend coming up is going to be a busy one. I was having a hard time scheduling everything in. Saturday we will be having our ice cream social at 1:30pm, the chicken wing eating contest at 4pm and karaoke will follow at around 5pm. On Sunday we will have the cupcake eating for the kids at 1pm, the Labour Day Classic will be on the big screen at 3pm and it will be movie night at 9pm. I am looking forward to the 2nd annual chicken wing eating contest. Last year turned out to be a great success. I think those that participated had a good time. I know that those that were watching enjoyed themselves.  I placed the order today for a few hundred extra wings so I am as ready as I will ever be.

Our specials at the Grill this past weekend were deep fried mars bars and oreo cookies. This led to some strange looks and the common question of how do you deep fry them. The mars bars turned out to be very popular and we sold out on Sunday morning. While we were in the deep frying mode we decided to try an impromptu experiment with deep fried dill pickles on a stick. There were mixed reviews – you either loved them or you hated them.  This weekend we are doing a BBQ beef on a bun special and a 2 for 1 waffle special.

This morning I was able to get a rare glimpse of all the ducks together in the same spot and it appears that we have 16 now. It has been hard to get an accurate head count lately since they are not all in the same  spot very often. They all look the same so you never knew if you are counting the same ones or different ones.

I hope that everyone has a great long weekend and I leave you with a little groaner joke.

Q. What time does a duck wake up?

A. At the quack of dawn.

After a few delays we now have our propane filling station setup and operational. Our hours and rates will be posted shortly. Watch for more details as we figure them out.

Even though Mother Nature was not very kind to us we still made the best of our annual Halloween in August. As most of you know it started raining Friday morning and didn’t really stop until Sunday afternoon. Despite that we were still able to do all of our Halloween activities.  By some miracle the rain stopped for a brief time on Saturday morning for the bobbing for apples. This doesn’t affect the kids of course since they are already in the pool but it made it much better for this apple tosser. Considering it was cool and kind of icky I wondered how many kids would actually come out but as usual we had a full pool. Our version of bobbing for apples is similar to the traditional in that they have to grab the apple in their teeth without using their hands. We put a ducky twist on it by having the kids in the pool and tossing them the apples. The kids have a blast as you will see from the pictures still to come. Next up in the afternoon was the games. Things started off a little slow with not many kids then all of a sudden we had a whole bunch come in and the games lasted over an hour. Once again we did the tried and true mummy wrap with toilet paper and the always iccky find the eyeballs in the brains. (translation grapes in oatmeal) This year we actually had some fake eyeballs so it added a bit of a twist. Most kids love to get down and dirty and dig in the slimy pail of goo.  The rain didn’t cooperate for our trick or treating and it was a cold, wet walk around the campsites – much like Halloween in October can be. Despite that we still had around 70 kids and one duck out and about. All in all everyone made the best of the bad weather and still had a good time.

Check out the pictures here http://picasaweb.google.com/RubberDuckyResort/HalloweenInAugust2010?feat=directlink

How many times have you heard that line today?  The weather has certainly been the hot topic lately. (yes pun intended) When it gets this hot it really is hard not to complain, but I try not to because before long we will have a foot of snow on the ground. 😦

We had a great turnout for our first ever Mini Olympics.

Mini Olympics Winners

Mini Olympics Winners

Mini Olympics Winners

Mini Olympics Winners

Mini Olympics Winners

Everyone that participated  was awarded a gold medal and the top winners in the age categories got to stand  on top the podium in front of everyone.

Next up was Fear Factor. The entries started out pretty slow, but in the end we had 16 teams participating. The first round we kept nice and calm with a ducky toss. The second round was time for the eating challenge. Like on the show each team had to choose one person to eat whatever we threw at them. We didn’t get too disgusting and everything was an actual food item. It wasn’t really stuff that you would eat everyday however – pork liver, beef tapa, snails, duck eggs and some sort of gelatiny coconutty thing that I really don’t remember the name of.

Apparently Luc doesn't like liver

Sorry ladies this was too funny to not post

Kinda looks like he is enjoyin a normal lunch

Next round was the timed relay. One partner was locked in the jail while the other partner searched through our fish tank to find the key.  Once they had a key they had to ride a kids tricycle, go down the kids slide and head to the jail to try the key in the lock. If they got the wrong key they had to go back and start all over again, if they got the right one then their partner had to ride the trike and race back to the fish tank.

Searching for the key

Riding the Trike

Down the slide

Is it the right key?

The Winners

We learned a few things from our first year of Olympics and Fear Factor. Most important is that next year we will separate them and do Mini Olympics on one weekend and Fear Factor on a different weekend. Then we will add an adult category to the Olympics and a kid category to the Fear Factor. I have to thank all the volunteers that helped out with the activities. It took a lot of extra hands to make this happen and we had lots of volunteers step up.