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

I would like to introduce you to one of our diehard poker players. He has been to every poker night so far. He is a tough player to come up against since it is hard to read his poker face.

If you have been out to the campground, you may already know Diego as one of our seasonal campers. He is well known around the campground since he is so big once you meet him you tend to remember.  Some people are a little nervous when they first meet him but they quickly realize how gentle he is.

It looks like we have our second casualty of the poker derby season. The Northern Lites Derby was scheduled for this weekend but although I haven’t seen official confirmation yet I think it is a safe assumption that the derby will be rescheduled. After checking the long term forecast I am planning our derby on the assumption that the snowmobile trails will not be open and we will just be running with cars. I have 4 geocaches planned as checkpoints for the derby and have another 3 places in mind for bonus caches. 

I had an interesting tidbit passed on to me this morning. Did you realize that there was a National Rubber Ducky
Day.. http://www.mypunchbowl.com/holidays/national-rubber-ducky-day.

2010 was kicked off with another fun filled New Year’s Eve at the Duck. We had a nice sized crowd with around 35 people.  There was a mixture of seasonal campers and some of our regular campers. Everyone pretty much knew everyone else and we were able to have a relaxing evening.

Somewhere behind all that steam is a group of boys having lots of fun.

The steam clears and yes they are there

Into the snow they go

 The boys had to run a little farther to find the snow this year. Last year there was a snowbank nice and close by, but not this year. There were some bigger boys that finished off the night in the hot tub, but I didn’t get their picture. I had better things to do at 4 in the morning lol. And I don’t think they would have been quite as agile to go and jump in a snowbank.

The Poker Players and we had to put the hockey game on the big screen to watch the shoot out

Some of the wii players

   Despite the cold weather the ice fishing was a popular attraction on the weekend. There were a few fish caught and also a few that got away and as always lots of fish tales to be told. The snowmobiling on the other hand has not been popular at all this year. There still isn’t really enough snow to bring most sledders out. This has not been a prosperous year for keeping the RDR Grill open on weekends since our main clientele is the sledders. January is looking to be a pretty busy month however. It starts on the 9th with poker night; the 16th is the Northern Lites Poker Derby; the 23rd is our poker derby and the social for the RDR social committee. We were able to sell a few tickets on New Year’s but still have lots available.

Today is time for everything to get back to normal after a couple weeks of a kind of messed up schedule. Maybe now I will be able to keep track of what day of the week it is. It has been hard lately with all the holidays.

And in case you were wondering it is only

Seems like I have been slacking off lately. It has been a week since I last posted.

On Friday we went to a very interesting meeting at a new supplier for the RDR Grill. We got some great tips for preparing the food in general. Most importantly we were able to sample some new foods to see if we would like to add them to the menu. That was a treat to sit there and have a chef prepare the stuff just for us to enjoy.  There will be some new items like salt and pepper dry ribs, sweet potato fries, salads; and some improved items like homemade pizza, ducky 911 wings and burgers.  Some items we decided against. I just don’t think the duck is ready for calamari rings. We will be unveiling some of the changes at our New Year’s Eve bash.  Another product that we found interesting was biodegradable plates. They are still plastic and disposable which is good for us, but they are also good for our environment.

I am just finalizing the last details for our Poker Derby in January, with a tentative date of the 23rd.(edit: just confirmed this date) We have a few options going on so hopefully it will appeal to lots of people. There will be a route for snowmobiles and a route for vehicles. There will also be a geocache map and a regular map. For those that may not know geocaching is finding ‘caches’ (hidden containers that usually contain a  log book and trading items) using a gps and the gps coordinates. So the derby will still have the traditional checkpoints, but anyone wanting to geocache will be given the gps coordinates and must use their gps to find the locations. This option will be available for both the cars and snowmobiles. I will also do up a normal map so that anyone who is not experienced in geocaching can still take part.  There are quite a few geocaches hidden in our area and up highway 6, but the idea of doing the poker derby  by geocache is new to the area. Following the derby we will also be having a social evening. This is to raise funds for our newly formed RDR Social Committee.  I am hoping to have the last detail confirmed today or tomorrow so that I can start advertising.  Fast forward a couple hours and I now have confirmation that our derby will be on the 23rd and all the initial planning is done. Now to work out all those minor details.

The call of the Ducky Express was heard all down the parade route on Friday night. For those of you that don’t know Metro quite often will get the kids going with a round of ‘Who’s number one?’ getting the kids to shout as loud as they can ‘Rubber Ducky’.  It turns out that we really were number once as we won first place in the commercial float category. The evening was quite enjoyable with a balmy -12 or so for a temperature and no North wind howling down Main Street. We were even able to light our tiki torches. I took some pictures and  you can kind of see what it was like, but you really had to be there in person.

The ducky express

This is where Ron, Marilyn and Geri warmed their toes by the bonfire.

Sunday was a pretty busy day around here. We started building our Santa parade float in the early afternoon and then carried on into the Grey Cup in the evening. After the game was done we even had an impromptu poker night happen. We had a just about perfect turn out for the Grey Cup with all of our tables  full. Our seating area was somewhat limited with having the screen on the wall, but it worked out anyway. Everyone had a great view and a great time. It was hard to get a good picture but this will give you an idea as to how big our big screen was

Our float construction went very very well and we ended up with an amazing float. We had somewhat of a game plan when we started and just kept adding and tweaking. It is now sitting under the picnic shelter waiting for Friday night. I am not sure if I will be able to get picture of the final outcome with it under there but I will try later tonight when it is dark. If not I will post pictures this weekend after the actual parade. A huge thanks to our float elves Darryl, Geri, Ron and Marilyn whose help was much appreciated. This is by far the best float we have ever had. This is a pic from fairly early in the construction process.

BTW that is not a kiddie pool it is a fish pond. Well it will be Friday night after I put the cardboard fish in it. We even made ‘fishing rods’ so that we can catch the fish. It is sooooo nice that it looks like it will be warm enough for us to ride on the float this year. On the other end of the trailer we have a campfire set up. There is one finishing touch that makes this float kind of unique to Rubber Ducky . Yup we are even bringing the Ducky Express with us. Remember if you are at the parade and you here the almost infamous ‘Who’s number one?’. Yell as loud as you can…..’ Rubber Ducky’.