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

We had a fairly decent turnout for our first Texas Hold em night this past Saturday. At one point we had two tables going on. One table was playing a serious game and the other table was not serious at all. They were more about fun than paying any real attention to the poker faces. There was also a lot of beginner’s luck going on. Sometimes it is better when you don’t really know what you are doing – or maybe it was all a big hustle? Maybe the whole ‘never played before thing’ was just an act.  Our next scheduled poker night will be November 7. I say scheduled because I have a feeling that there may be some unscheduled nights that just happen without planning. 

We had a group of waterfowl hunters from Kentucky show up on Saturday afternoon looking for a place to stay for a couple days. They had spent one night in Winnipeg and were quite happy to get out into the country. They were here looking for some Canada Geese and were not disappointed as they had a couple good hunting days. We picked up a couple new recipes for cooking the geese and had some yummy samples last night. They will be heading home tomorrow but have already booked in their hunting trip for next year. It is always interesting to get the guys in from different areas of the states and hear the stories they have to tell.

We have been having fantastic luck on the fishing this weekend catching approx 50 fish in a couple hours on Sunday alone. Ok so maybe we are using a net to do it. We have been getting lots of orders for fresh frozen trout in the last couple weeks. We are now working on cleaning out the small pond for the winter. It is not deep enough to over winter fish so we need to get them all out. Since Sunday was the first time that we had taken any fish out of that pond ourselves another taste test was in order. And they passed. The favorite recipe around here is for stuffed baked trout: You mix some bread crumbs, parsley, garlic powder, onion powder, salt and pepper. Melt some margarine and drizzle it in over the crumb mixture. Stir it all around and stuff it in the cavity.  Wrap in foil and bake it in the oven or on the BBQ. Once it is done you peel back the skin on one side, salt and pepper, flip it over and peel off the rest of the skin, salt and pepper, then serve and enjoy. Next time I will actually measure the amount of each ingredient and post the official recipe.

Does anyone else remember that commercial where ‘she told two friends, then she told two friends’ well that’s what I want to start this week. Everyone find two friends and tell them that our heated pool is still open this weekend. Then tell them to tell two friends. Actually they don’t even have to be friends, you can tell strangers on the street corner if you like. The main thing is that if everyone tells two friends the news should travel pretty fast. 

This past weekend was not a very busy one at all with less than 5 campsites here. We don’t really know the reason because the weather was fairly nice overall. Admittedly Sunday was a little iffy, but they were still swimming and fishing almost all day.  The SIATV fishing derby was also this weekend and they had a decent turnout with about 25 fisherpeople. We had hoped that more people would come out since it was a nice day but fun was had by all anyway. There were some pretty big fish caught this weekend. One was close to 20″.  One of the boys had just barely thrown his hook in the water when he pulled the big one in. When the fish got big enough and we started promoting catch and keep fishing we knew there would be some issues of how to control what was kept and it was very much abused this weekend. There were some fish kept that were not paid for.  After about the 4th or 5 th fish that I saw heading away from the pond I decided enough was enough and reminded them that they were supposed to be paying for the fish.  They did pay for a couple fish after that, but not nearly the number that they kept. And you can guarantee that type of person will be the first to complain if the price of the fishing licenses have to go up to compensate. It’s not like we are charging a fortune for the fish – only 20 cents/inch and with the kids only paying $5 to fish all weekend. I personally think that is one heck of a deal.

We have also been selling quite a bit of fresh and smoked trout in the last few days. We are just barely able to keep up with the orders and the smoked fish has been especially popular.  I did some research online to check out some recipes and then tweaked and customized and managed to get it right the first time. Now we have a Ducky secret recipe and I am the only one that knows it – ooooh the power. Actually I don’t know if anyone else can recreate it because my ‘tablespoons’ are not really measured precisely. I simply hold the actual table spoon (not the measuring spoon) and dump the spice until it is at the right level the dump. Of course ‘the right level’ is subjective to my eyeball.

Some fish from this weekend

I would have to say that Fiesta Weekend was a success. The Mexico-like weather most definately helped that out. I’m sure glad that I thought to plan it that way.

Some people were wondering why on earth I was collecting plastic water bottles all week and why I was wrapping them in paper on Friday evening. It all became clear when they saw them turned into Maracas by the kids. They decorated them with stickers and some artistic coloring. Then we filled them with beans and beads and set them loose to make as much noise as possible. I hope there aren’t too many parents that hate me after that craft, but the kids seemed to enjoy it.  No surprise that they also seemed to like the Pinata. They saw me heading out to the playground and all came a running. Unfortunately not all the kids got a whack at it, but they all did get some loot in the end so all was ok. I think that I also found my new campground photographer on Saturday.  At the last minute before we started the whacking I realized that Haylie was sitting in the perfect spot to take pictures so I handed her the camera and let her go to town. She did a fantastic job. (for those of you that don’t know Haylie is my 8 eight year old daughter)

The Taco in a Bags and Taco Salad’s were flying out of the RDR Grill all weekend. There were a few people who had never heard of a taco in a bag that decided this weekend was the time to try it. And were quite pleased they did. I didn’t have an ice cream social planned for this weekend but got a special request to put one on at the last minute. The word was circulated at the pool and around the area while we were getting things put out and in the end had over 30 people building sundaes. It was of course the perfect ice cream day on Saturday with the temperature close to 30C. The pool was busy from Friday evening right up until almost 5pm on Sunday. We will be keeping it open for this weekend for sure and hopefully we can get one more weekend out of Mother Nature.  At this point we are planning to keep the pool open until October 5, unless we get a drastic change in temperatures and it starts freezing hard at night and not getting about 10C during the day. And that better not happen any time soon.

One of our stocked trout

This Saturday (Sept 26) is the fishing derby here that is put on by the South Interlake ATV Club. Last year the derby was held on a cool day in October and we had about 20 people fishing so hopefully with an earlier date and some sunny weather we can get an even better turnout. An added bonus this year as well is that we will be keeping the fish that are caught and they will be available to purchase later that evening. We will also be having fresh frozen trout on hand after that.

The results are in and our newest bay is now called Pintail Bay. There were some different suggestions – like Daffy Duck Bay and Duck Tape Bay which didn’t quite make the cut. Everyone settled on Pintail Bay and I am ok with that so it is now official.

Back in June if someone would have said that we would be getting highs near 30C on Sep 16 I am sure that someone would have shipped them off to the looney bin. But luckily this has been an amazing week and looks like it will carry on until at least after the weekend. People must be starting to believe the weekend forecast because the phone calls and bookings are starting today. I was googling around trying to find some kind of activity to put on this weekend and found that quite a few other campgrounds have what they call a fiesta weekend, so I thought hmmm why not give it a try. I didn’t really know at first exactly what we would do but things are starting to come together now. We definately had to smash a pinata (and hopefully not smash me or anyone else). The other day I came up with the idea to do a maraca craft. Some parents may not  be too thrilled with the noise after effects , but I am sure that the kids will enjoy it. We will also be putting our taco in bag on special at the RDR Grill. I am also adding in a ‘this weekend only’ special of a taco salad. Saturday evening will end off with our Fun Bingo.

Our seasonal appreciation dinner this past Saturday went very well. I didn’t get an exact count but am guessing around 60 people came out. The homegrown trout was a bit of a surprise to some as they didn’t realize what hid beneath the depths of the ponds.  Everyone certainly enjoyed their sample and some have said they will be back for more now that we are starting to sell them. The fish were cooperating quite nicely on Sunday when we wanted to cook some more up for our supper. I was sitting here  watching our resident fisherman pulling in a fish with pretty much every cast so I had to grab my camera and go check it out. You could actually watch the fish swarm the hook when it landed on the water. A lot of those were smaller ones so they all went back in then he moved on to the other pond to get the eaters. The final tally was 10 in about 1/2 an hour. They went straight from the pond to the BBQ and into our tummies. Right now there are close to 8000 fish in the ponds so the odds are looking good for the upcoming fishing derby. I was able to get a few pictures but they aren’t the greatest since we don’t have the most photogenic fish. They would rather get back in the water than pose for a camera.

When we added on the new bay this summer I couldn’t come up with a good duck name at the time so I just called it Feather Bay. I was never too happy with the name and neither were  the new residents so this weekend they are planning a potluck and bay naming evening. The only stipulation is that it has to be duck related. It should be interesting to see the ideas that they come up with.

Thankfully the mosquitos have given us a bit of a break in the last few days. There were some evenings last weekend that they were just horrible but this week they have been almost non existent.

It never ceases to amaze me how things can go from almost or completely full the past 4 weekends to a grand total of only 10 campsites and 3 rooms booked for this weekend. The first weekend after the kids go back to school is usually a slow one. When you add in the rain today and the fact that all week they had been forecasting a rainy weekend it certainly doesn’t help. They have now decided to change the forecast and are calling for a nice weekend so hopefully we will at least get some more campers out tomorrow.  This weekend is our annual seasonal appreciation dinner so I have spent the morning getting things ready for that. We are planning on serving some home grown trout as part of the dinner, so the mission for the week has been to catch enough for everyone to sample. One night this week we also did some test runs on smoking trout. You shoulda been here cause the samples turned out pretty darn good and were gone in a hurry. We are planning to start selling both fresh, frozen and smoked trout. Watch my blog for more updates when they are available.

That is the best word that I can come up with to describe the long weekend.  The weather was amazing, the people were amazing and everyone was just here to have a good time and enjoy the summer finally.

Everyone was a little slow to sign up for the chicken wing eating contest, but when it came time to start the contest we had 10 people ready to go at it. Since this was our first contest we were kind of winging it and figuring things out as we went. I finally decided on starting each eater out with 25 wings and whoever ate the most in two minutes was the winner. Dennis had to modify the time because two minutes went by quickly and there were not many wings eaten yet. So we extended it to 5 minutes. The two winners of the first round – Metro and Doug went head to head with a dozen wings in the final eat off. The first round of wings were a nice BBQ flavour, but I heated things up a little for the final round. Once the dust had settled it was Metro coming out on top. A big kudos to all the contestants as they made for some great entertainment. The contest will most definately become an annual event. A big thank you also to my photographer Marilyn who got right in there to get some good shots for me to share.

Hmmm.. if you have time to pose you just aren't eating fast enough.

The eat off

The Big Winner

The cupcake eating was also a huge hit with the kids. We didn’t realize how many kids were here until the rec building started filling up. There was standing room only by the time things started. We had all the tables full of kids ready to dive into the cupcakes. The idea was that they weren’t supposed to use their hands. It wasn’t really a contest but was just in fun because it was just to hard to judge the mass kaos. I myself didn’t even really see what was happening simply because of all the people around watching. Mental note for next year – prepare for more kids and make more room.

Cupcake eating

 Once the chicken wing fun was done it was time to set up for Bingo Night which also had a huge turnout. We added an extra 4 tables and everything was still full to capacity. Sunday was a bit of a slower day with most people spending the day around the pool. The Bomber game started out  with a decent crowd watching but they soon lost interest as they gave up on the Bombers. On Sunday afternoon a group of campers headed out for a paintball battle. Sounds like a lot of fun was had and some are aready preparing for a rematch. We all learned that when it is wasp season it is not a good idea to take a sip from a drink that has been sitting around. Unfortunately Dave learned this the hard way when he got stung on the tongue by a wasp who had taken over his drink. Once things settled down and we were sure a trip to the hospital wasn’t in order the only thing we could do was laugh – not at him, but rather with him. His tongue swole up so much that he could not really talk.  Luckily he is a good natured guy because as much as we felt sympathetic to how he was feeling it was just impossible to keep a straight face when he was trying to talk to you, especially with certain words like slushee which came out a lot more like tutti. The picnic shelter was pretty full for our movie for Sunday night – Paul Blart Mall Cop.

My goal now is to make people realize that we don’t shut down after the September long. We keep the pool open until the end of September and the campground is open until mid October.  Most campgrounds shut down the pool now and many close mid September so a lot of people don’t even think about being able to camp and swim for another few weeks yet. We did have one camper already take advantage of the pay as you go camping. They left the camper here after the weekend and will be coming back for the next couple weekends. I have a couple more scheduled to come in during the next few weeks. Let’s hope that mother nature continues with the nice weahter.

Starting this week we will be allowing successful fishermen, fisherwomen and fisherkids to keep their fish for a little campfire snack. There has been some sampling for quality control purposes around here in the last couple weeks and the finished product has turned out pretty tasty. I have posted cleaning instructions and recipes on our website as well as in the rec building so that everyone can see how simple the process is. In a quick nutshell – chop off the head, pull out the guts, wash, stuff with onions, add spices, wrap in foil, throw on the BBQ and last but not least enjoy. Simple, but good.

We are enjoying a week of nice summer weather finally. Hopefully it will hold out until long after the long weekend.  Speaking of the long weekend we are starting to get the wings and things ready. I really don’t know how many wings we may need for the chicken wing contest. I am just going to keep cooking and cooking as much as I can. It’s funny how on different weekends there will be one thing that we will sell lots of and it usually varies from weekend to weekend. One time it was rootbeer floats, next burgers and this past weekend was taco in a bag.  The rootbeer floats in particular we sold more in one weekend that we had all last season.

This will likely be our last big weekend of the year. Hopefully the weather stays nice and word is getting out that our pool stays open until almost the end of September so that we can get some more good weekends in this fall.

This little blurb passed through my inbox and thought I would share. I had never heard of glamping before.

Dennis had the opportunity to go up in a plane again and took a few pictures around so I thought that I would share.

A little upside down and crooked view

A shot of Scrapyard Paintball

Paintball in the top corner