Movie night just got bigger and better. During our movie nights this summer our picnic shelter will be transformed into an outdoor theatre complete with a 8’x12′ movie screen and full sound system. We did our test run last night and it passed all the tests with flying colors. I think our movie nights will prove to be quite popular this summer. We are going to have the popcorn machine, drinks, and snacks avialable right at the ‘theatre’.
Outdoor movie theater
You just never know what might go on when noone is around. This is something that you will never see happen on a weekend.
Yes that is a boat in our pond. There was a legitimate reason for needing the boat, but the fun they had was a bonus.
They were moving the diffuser for the windmill to a different area of the pond. On the way there and back they just happened to do a few laps around the island. It was a little hard to get much speed up though – they would just get going and they were at the shore already.
The boat launch could use a little work however. Notice the ducks in the background. They even had to come and see what was happening.
This day will go down in Duck history as the first official boating expedition in the pond. I am not going to say the last because I suspect they will find some other excuse to use the boat again.
Things have quietened down here as another weekend is coming to an end. I was able to take the time and have a good look around for our other female duck. We have noticed that at times there is only the male duck around so figured she had a nest around somewhere. It was just a matter of finding it which can be like a needle in a haystack. They plan it so that their nests are hidden so it has taken a while to find her.(speak of the devil, I actually just had to take a break when she showed up quacking on the doorstep looking for bread) She is all camoflaged in an out of the way corner of bush near the pond. If our calculations are right the first ones should be ready to hatch this weekend. I am not even sure when the second hen started sitting on her eggs, so don’t know the other due date. Somewhere in this picture is the hen and her nest.
If you have driven down highway 67 from Warren to Stonewall you may have noticed that we moved our advertising sign out there. My goal right now is to spread the word that the RDR Grill is open to the public. We had people stop in this weekend just for that reason this weekend so it is starting to work. We are still updating the menu with the addition of perogies and jalepeno poppers this past weekend. This week we will also be venturing into pizza. I will let you know when the new menu is posted to our website. So now to let people know that they can order their food on the way out and pick it up when they are registering. If the kids are sitting down filling their faces it certainly would make for easier camper set up 🙂
There was someone riding past here on a quad today that we would love to give a big handshake to but, we have no idea who it was. They were courteous enough to slow down as they drove past so that our campers weren’t disturbed by the noise from the ATV. We would love to be able to let them know that it was noticed and appreciated.
Apparently on last year’s Easter in July Weekend that easter bunny was pretty sneaky. As we were out for a bike ride we came across an egg that was still hidden from last year. Judging by its wounds it was sprung from its hiding place with a nasty ride through the lawnmower. Makes you wonder how many others are still lurking around. I think we hid something like 13 dozen of the eggs so there were bound to be a few that didn’t make it into the baskets. We had a good chuckle about it anyway. As H says it is a good thing it wasn’t a real egg. ewwww
This weekend is bingo time again – Saturday at 6:30pm in the rec building. If you are feeling lucky make sure you come on out. This always seems to be a popular evening and our pots are getting bigger all the time. Last Jackpot was $45.
It certainly didn’t feel like it yesterday. Aren’t we long past due for a nice warm stretch of weather? It is starting out as a nice morning today, but that is supposed to change this afternoon.
On the upside at least the leaves are starting to come out. The saskatoons are in full bloom right now with more and more showing up every year. If you are out here in the next few days you will notice all the white blossoms – those are the saskatoons. I noticed that we are even starting to get quite a few new trees growing now. There are some that are only a foot or so tall, but are full of blooms. If we don’t get a frost in the next few days we should have a good crop of saskatoon berries later this summer. hmmm good
We had a fairly decent turnout this weekend, nothing spectacular but still not bad considering the weather and time of year. Our bookings are still coming in for the summer, but it would be nice to get more people out at this time of year. In some ways it was almost a good thing that it wasn’t super busy because I was the only one working in the concession this weekend. Certainly not by choice, only by staffing conflicts. I did hire someone else yesterday, so we are back up to the full staff level. (for now).
If you have been on our website lately, you may notice that our visitor count is quickly approaching the 10,000 mark. The counter was started approximatley the end of October so I would consider that a pretty good average. This winter we were able to maintain a good number of daily visitors ending up with a significant increase over last winter. In the month of May we had 1860 people visit the site. That is what they call unique visits meaning that it was their first time on the site. Some of them returned more than once making the total visits 2437. In the last week or so we have had close to 100 visitors per day. If we could ever get some summer weather we should make it close to 200.
I had better leave this computer now since I have some flower bed digging to do. Enjoy the weather this morning while we have it.
It is not even June and I am already finding myself looking for a new staff member. Yesterday things were looking good with two returning employees and another one set to start in late June. Today I fortunately still have my two returning staff, but am looking to fill the other position. So if you know of anyone looking for a summer job feel free to send them my way. There are applications on our website that they can fill out and return.
Yesterday I sent out a special offer to our email newsletter subscribers, so if you aren’t on the list already you better sign up.
Things are shaping up to be a good weekend weatherwise. The last two days we have actually been able to go to the bus with just sweaters on and not all bundled up in warm jackets. So, that must be a good sign. This weekend is our first ice cream social and also a movie night.I am surprised to be still getting calls from people wondering if the pool is open yet? This makes me curious about when other campgrounds are opening their pools? I had heard that one of the larger campgrounds wasn’t opening until June, but now I wonder about the rest. Obviously anything solar heated would not be very warm right now and anyone heating with propane would be paying a small fortune in this weather. We are fortunate that we heat ours with the geothermal system, but now I just have to get people to understand that it is open and warm. Ok, so I actually went and checked the temperature – it is pushing 90F. It felt so nice and warm when I stuck my hand in.
This has been a very fast week. It seems like it was over just after it started. Between the getting ready and actually painting rm 4 we managed to get rid of three days pretty quick. It looks so much better with a fresh coat of paint that we are going to get rm 2 done next. My painting partner wasn’t too excited to hear that since I had said we were done painting after this week. oops my mistake.
We just had a couple from Colorado stop in for the night. The drop in travellers are always a bonus addition to the reservations that I am expecting. There have been a couple families come through to tour around and check us out today. Also, have been quite a few bookings and phone inquiries. A nice warm Friday afternoon apparently gets people thinking camping.
As I sit here writing this we are in the middle of a gorgeous sunny afternoon. This is the second day in a row that we have been able to open the big door on the rec building to enjoy the view and fresh air. I am looking out at the ducks swimming around and listening to our new fountain bubbling away. It is nice to have the sound of water movement again, the fountain is such a simple thing but it makes a big difference aesthetically. I was trying to keep it fairly quiet, but this weekend it has become apparent that I have to go public. We are going to have more babies at the Duck. Our momma duck has a nest. I thought that she was hidden pretty good, but some kids managed to stumble upon her yesterday. Luckily I saw what they were up to and got them out of there before they bothered her too much. It looks like we will have to post notices again and be the ‘bad guys’ to enforce the rule of no kids under 12 near the pond without an adult. We should have about 3 more weeks until they hatch, then a couple weeks until they are big enough to fend for themselves.
If you watched the news a couple days ago, you would have seen the town of Warren was the top story. And not necessarily for a good thing since there were a couple of funnel clouds spotted in the area. From what we can tell they were on the west side of town. We didn’t know anything was out of the ordinary until someone who lives in that area phoned to ask if we saw them. A little while later someone from CBC called to ask if we had seen them or knew anything about them. Could have gotten a little free publicity if I would have said yes, but that would necessarily be good publicity. It could scare some people off if they think we are prone to tornadoes.
We had a busy morning in the RDR Grill, with about 18 members of the camping club coming for breakfast. Just over half tried out our new waffle maker and the rest ordered off the regular menu. We have a few sites taking advantage of the weather and are staying on for late checkout. Most of the seasonals that were out are still hanging around until the bitter end and enjoying the last bit of pool and relaxing time.
Today (now Monday) is definately a different day. It is a rainy, dreary, lazy type of day. The rain was much needed however and at least it waited until Monday to come along. We planted another batch of trees this past weekend so this rain was timed perfect for them.
I think everybody is wondering where the week has gone. The long weekend’s are nice, but it doesn’t leave much time to get things done during the next week. Our week seemed even shorter with about 7 campers coming in yesterday for the weekend. Another 6 or so are expected tonight. We even had a couple from Pennsylvania stop by last night. After enjoying a relaxing night they were on their way bright and early this morning. These rain showers are supposed to end this morning and then the forecast is still calling for sunny and close to 20C for this weekend, we can only hope that it happens. Last night was a beautiful night with no wind and still fairly warm temps. This weekend’s activity is free mini golf. We are giving every camper a free round of mini golf.
The one thing that I did manage to get done this week was to set up a new online reservation system for our website. With this system you can actually check availability to see if there are any sites open for specific dates. I was also able to set it up so that our value packages can be booked online. That was a nice feature and hopefully will help to promote them. We have had a few bookings for the packages already this year, but could always use more. I do have one more minor change since with the new system instead of our weekly rate being get one night free I had to enter it is as a percentage discount. Now I have to change the rates table on our website to match the reservation system. It still works out to approximately the same price, but there is a difference of $1 or so on some rates.
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson go on a camping trip, set up their tent, and fall asleep. Some hours later, Holmes wakes his faithful friend.
“Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you see.”
Watson replies, “I see millions of stars.”
“What does that tell you?”
Watson ponders for a minute. “Astronomically speaking, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, it tells me that Saturn is in Leo. Timewise, it appears to be approximately a quarter past three. Theologically, it’s evident the Lord is all-powerful and we are small and insignificant. Meteorologically, it seems we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. What does it tell you?”
Holmes is silent for a moment, then speaks. “Watson, you idiot, someone has stolen our tent.”
We were luckier than most campgrounds in that we didn’t have 4 inches of snow on the ground Friday morning and we didn’t have any cancellations due to weather. The only issue that we had from the cold was some frozen water lines and sewers on Friday night and Saturday morning. Once we got on to Saturday morning the weather straightened out a little and we were into a pretty decent weekend as far as May Long’s go.
The rec building was hopping Friday evening with the strong, cold winds making it difficult to have a bonfire or do any cooking outside. Our newly renovated and updated RDR Grill was put to the test this weekend with lots of food being enjoyed by our campers. We had a decent turnout for the Pig Roast with around 70 people being served and bingo was popular as always with an almost full house in the rec building.
I think our next acquisition around here should be a lie detector. That way when the fountain in the pond gets knocked over again we can bring in the ‘suspects’, hook them up and find out the truth. Next step would be sending them into the pond to fix things back up instead of us having to find a lovely volunteer from the audience. (OK not so lovely, but the help was much appreciated anyway) Typical with any weekend when we have a campground full of people there are always some personality conflicts. The lie detector would very quickly solve the ‘he said, she said’ incidents. We get called upon to figure out whose story to believe and then figure out what we are supposed to do about it. Not always an easy task. This past weekend was probably one of our worst for senseless destruction and littering. It started with the disovery on Saturday morning that the fountain had been knocked over and a picnic table broken beyond repair. Then we continued to find things throughout the weekend – solar light smashed beyond identification; the bridge in the mini golf area was moved; there were kids riding toy lawnmowers down the slide; kids trying to wack each other with the pool net; the list goes on. And the garbage laying around is something else. Where you finished your drink is apparently where you should drop it on the ground. And, of course every last golf ball was taken from the mini golf course.
On to the next weekend… So far the forecast looks good with some sunshine and warm temperatures. We have a camping club returning for their second year. We have a few pay as you goers and hopefully we get some overnighters take advantage of the nice weather. This weekend is also the annual town wide garage sale in Warren which means unless there is a major catastrophy you won’t see my face around the campground on Saturday morning.
I submitted my ‘weather pic’ to the weathernetwork.com and it has now been viewed 498 times. Check it out http://www.theweathernetwork.com/your_weather/details/620/1147908/1/upload
Today is the day to restock and regroup for another weekend. After a ‘real’ weekend of working in our new concession and store all of us workers are in agreement that it is working out fabulous. And luckily there weren’t very many bugs to work out and things ran smoothly -other than my cash register deciding to freeze right at bingo time, that I could have done without. It seems to be back on track for the moment, but I don’t know how long it will last.
If we can get past today and tomorrow it looks like we should be in the clear for the weekend. They are still saying that we will see some sunshine and no rain. We won’t discuss the next couple days however.
The mini golf facelift is basically done. Yesterday’s rain has delayed the finishing touches but it definately looks much better right now. We just have to get some rails to go on the fence (which is proving difficult because the lumber store doesn’t seem to want to return calls??). We have to fix up some carpet on the holes, but unfortunately the weather isn’t going to let us do that before the weekend. We need a couple days of dry conditions before that can be finished. It looks like the gravel to touch up the picnic shelter has just arrived and then that is about the last of the major cosmetic stuff for this weekend. There still seems to be lots on the ‘to do’ lists, but it is coming along.
The RDR Grill will be having chocolate cheesecake and lemon meringue pie as our special desserts this weekend. So you can probably guess what I have been doing this morning. My pie crust have just beeped that they are done and my cheese cake is cooling as we speak. Soon time to taste test mmmmmm.
Fast forward to Friday morning and I am surprised that we have not had any cancellations because of the weather. We seem to have missed the snow and are just getting some rain. It is making things wet for set up today, but if we hopefully should dry up quickly. The last report that I heard the pool was getting close to 8OF. It doesn’t matter what the temperature is outside I expect there will still be people in it this weekend.
I just released a new recipe book this week – Ducky’s Hard Slushee Recipes. There are a few regular campers (and owners) that have been creating some adult slushees during the last couple years that we have had the slushee machine so I decided it was time to go public with the concoctions. I have also created a prepaid slushee card, thanks to the suggestion of one of those regular campers. The idea is that you can prepay for 2-10 slushees at one time, then just bring the card in when you want to get one. It will save searching for money everytime the kids come and do the “mom can I have a slushee?” Just hand them the card and away they go.
Kahluaccino
Iced Cappuccino
1 oz Kahlua
Irish Coffee
Iced Cappuccino
1 oz Whiskey
Mocha Mudslide
Iced Cappuccino
1 oz Kahlua
1 oz Irish Cream
Strawberry Lemonade
Strawberry Slushee
1 oz Lemon Vodka
Dacquiri
Any flavour slushee
1 oz Rum
Margarita
Any flavour slushee
1 oz Vodka
Blue Bomber
Blue Raspberry Slushee
1 oz Raspberry Sour Puss
Or 1 oz raspberry vodka
Butter Ripple Cooler
Iced Cappuccino
1 oz Butter Ripple Schnapps
Cappuccino Creamer
Iced Cappuccino
1 oz Irish Cream
Russian Relaxer
Iced Cappuccino
1 oz Vodka
Strawberry Dreamsicle
Strawberry Slushee
1 oz Strawberry cream liquor
Mango Madness
Mango Slushee
1 oz Mango Malibu
Taste of the Tropics
Strawberry Slushee
1 oz Malibu Coconut Rum
Peachy Keen
Any Flavour Slushee
1 oz Peach Schnapps
Rubber Ducky Resort & Campground - A family campground located in Warren, near Winnipeg, Manitoba 