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

This past weekend was our first Christmas in July at the Duck and it went over all right. It really is hard to get into Christmas when it is pushing 30C outside. We did have a few people that found  the spirit and decorated their campsites. I even saw a grinch hanging around at one site. We even managed to find a volunteer that was willing to put on a Santa suit in this heat. Thanks so much to Robin for being our Santa. We set him up in the shade of the picnic shelter and had probably around 2o kids come to visit. 

It has been nice to finally be getting a hot, sunny summer. After the monsoon rains earlier this year it was looking a little shaky. Things have definately turned around and our weekends have been filling up like crazy. Here’s hoping that it lasts well into the fall.

We have been getting a bit of a tech upgrade. One of our seasonals has been kind enough to install some speakers and new wiring so that things are a lot simpler for us. It now only takes a couple minutes for us to put on a movie, sports or anything on the big screen with the projector. We are playing all the televised Bombers games on the big screen now. We have some new speakers set up outside so that the tunes are always playing. I am even slowly learning which buttons to push and which dials to turn. A big thanks to Wayne for helping out.

The long weekend is fast approaching and the forecast still looks good. As of right now our sites are all booked up. Most long weekends I end up with cancellations and rebooking so we will see what the next couple days bring. As always Aug long is when we have our mini golf tourney and this year we are also doing Karaoke. The weekend after the long weekend is our Fear Factor and Mini Olympics weekend. Things are slowly coming together for that. We have the fear factor part pretty much worked out. I have  few ideas for the mini olympics, but think we still need to add some more stuff. I will have to put my thinking cap on and see what I can come up with.  If anyone has any ideas please feel free to send them my way.

Things did not look well for DuckyFest Saturday morning when mother nature decided to send some rain our way. Thankfully she turned off the tap around 1pm and we were able to have a great fundraiser. By far the most popular place was the Ducky Jail. There were quite a few convicts spending their time inside the big house. Our sheriffs took their job seriously and if you saw them coming your way you knew you were in trouble.  We had about 6 or so tables of silent auction prizes that were donated including the grand prizes of flat screen tv, gazebo, Black Eyed Peas tickets, air hockey table, and money tree. A huge thank you to everyone that donated as well as to all the volunteers that helped out. I can’t say enough about the volunteers that helped out this year. We had lots of people step up to help out and make the day run smoothly.  There are too many pictures to post into the blog so follow the link to this album here http://picasaweb.google.com/RubberDuckyResort/DuckyFest2010ChildrenSWishFundraiser?feat=directlink  The Karoake guys from Matchmaker music generously donated their time and equipment once again during the afternoon. We had some good and some not so good singers come out. They even brought Elvis along for the ride. They will be returning on the Sunday of the August long weekend.

It seems like every year somebody has to get their head shaved  or mullet cut off and this year was no exception. Kyle and Bernard were the victims (oops I mean volunteers) this year. They managed to raise $588 for the cause.

And now what everyone has been waiting for…. the grand total is …. $3017 raised. Almost $1000 more than last year.

Things are coming along nicely for DuckyFest this weekend. This is our 5th annual fundraiser – amazing how fast the time flies. We have pretty much a full campground for the weekend and are expecting a few day visitors so hopefully we will have a big total for our donation.  The donations are still coming in for the silent auction, the volunteers are still signing up and everything is looking good for a great weekend. Looks like even the weather will cooperate. We have certainly enjoyed all the sunshine this past weekend. There were a few of our seasonals on holidays this past week and they put their talent to good work by building the jail for DuckyFest.

We gotta give everybody that helped out a huge pat on the back because it turned out amazing. Special thanks to Doug and R N R Steel for the doors and windows. They were a great finishing touch. On Saturday night it was given a test run with a gangsta wannabe, an uglykid and a birthday girl being thrown in jail. I have a feeling it will make a lot of money on Saturday and will create a lot of laughs. The plan is that it costs a $2 donation to arrest someone and $1 to get bailed out. There are some people that better make sure they always have a loonie in their pocket.

We added a couple new things to the schedule for Saturday. Cory from Sinclair Fashions is going to be setting up a display and he is going to donate 10% of all the sales to the CWF. Mcrae Motorsports will be bringing our their race cars and super truck and will have them set up on display for everyone to check out.

It is really funny to see that the ducks actually have their own little personalities (or duckonalities) and how smart they really are. They are pretty much all the same in that they know to come strolling over to the rec building or our house when they are looking for a treat. They are quite tame and will come close most of the time. If there gets to be too many people around that they don’t know they do run for cover however. Most of them will take the bread right out of my hand. Some are gentle and don’t even touch me, but others do bite the hand that feeds them. Luckily they have no teeth so it doesn’t hurt. One of the males like to play catch believe it or not. He will wait for me to throw the bread and is quite good at catching it midair. If by chance he drops the piece he will actually leave that one on the ground and wait for me to throw the next one. If you watch in this video you can see him catching it.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgtX9Qjv6Vs

It is hard to believe that we have now been multiple days without any rain and I heard a rumour of 27C for Wednesday. (fingers crossed now) No complaining and whining now that’s for sure.

We had a full house for our rock painting craft on Saturday morning. There were some very talented kids creating masterpieces.

Mrs. Potato Head?

The finished products

A big thanks to Julie and Collette for helping out. The kids always have such a good time painting their rocks that we have already decided that we need to do it again another weekend.

We have a tab bucket at the entrance to the rec building so be sure to save your tabs and drop them off. Let’s see how full we can get the bucket this summer.

I think we are all still shaking our heads in amazement that so much water could fall in so little time. We had some minor flooding issues like everyone else did, but were quite lucky overall. We had no damage and noone had their camper basements flooded. It is now Tuesday morning as I write this and things are drying up really fast around the yard. I only had one family that braved the weather to come out for weekend camping. The phone was ringing all week with cancellations. We did however have quite a few seasonals out for the weekend. On the upside of the weekend mother nature turned off the tap for a little while on Saturday morning so that we could check out the community garage sale in Warren. We did get a little bit damp, but at least we didn’t get drenched. Saturday evening we decided the only thing to do was put on a movie in the rec building.

Avatar on the big screen

 

I did manage to get out for walk in between showers on Sunday morning and snap some pictures.  I made it about 1/2 way around the campground and then made a hasty retreat back to the house when it started pouring rain yet again. The water level has dropped drastically since these were taken and we are almost back to normal. By this weekend things should be completely dry (as long as mother nature is done)

The ducks were lovin the weather and all the extra ponds to play in

Pintail Lake

Where the bridge is supposed to be

The bridge where it is not supposed to be

Not a good day for a campfire

 Thankfully the weekend was not a complete writeoff and the sun came out on Sunday. The little kids and some big kids were able to get in the pool. They were quite happy to help with draining the excess water out the side of the pool. After that many inches of water the pool was full right to the very top and the funnest way to get it out was with a couple cannonballs.

There is not much point in even looking at the forecast anymore since it never seems to be right lately. Hopefully this weekend coming up will be a nice, sunny one. We are doing free kiddie train rides all weekend for anyone camping here and it is not much fun to ride in the rain.

If you listen to QX 104 this week you may hear some Rubber Ducky Ads. There are some quick blurbs like this hour or the weather brought to you by… After only one day I must say the response has been good. The visitors on our website took a jump and I got quite a few bookings yesterday and this morning. As we turn the calendar to June it is time to really start thinking summer. Only 24 more days until school is over and summer holidays begin. Let the countdown begin!