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

No I didn’t drop off the face of the earth but my internet did. Our modem went down Wednesday night. MTS was out on Friday morning to fix it up but our wireless is still down so I am still attached to a leash basically. Our hardwired jack is located in the house and it is really cramping my style. I am used to using the computer here there and everywhere. Hopefully tomorrow or Wed the wireless will be back online.

Last week managed to fly by extremely fast. Thursday morning I cooked breakfast for the one camping club before they pulled out. The other club was here until Friday morning then those sites quickly filled up with the Warren baseball group. We were quite full this weekend actually.  By my quick count there was over 15 overnight sites which is amazing for  a weekend in June before school is done.  I am excited and a little scared to see just exactly what the summer weekends will bring. Friday night at 10:30pm we had 3 trucks and boats from Minnesota stop in looking for rooms. They were on their way to Grand Rapids and had had enough driving for the day. “A woman with long red hair walking a dog” apparently sent them our way so a thanks to you whoever you are. 

It is nice to see that the weather has turned around and is finally cooperating. Overall it was a good weekend. We did have a storm pass through on Saturday night but it was fortunately short lived. There was quite a bit of hail that came out of it. I heard there was even some snowballs being thrown around after and there were some snow drifts. Just a little something to keep things interesting.

I know that some kids are already done but school is offically finished tomorrow around here. Then it is  time for all the kids to start driving their parents crazy and that summer camping season will also begin.

It looks like I should be off my leash by the end of today. Trying to stay in one spot long enough to type this is proving difficult this morning and it has taken me over an hour to do.

Considering the weekend began with a Tornado warning it turned out pretty good.  The weather wasn’t the warmest, but it was still tolerable. It didn’t seem to stop anyone from going in the pool. We were quite full on Saturday night as we had 4 drive up sites in addition to the reservations. One was a couple from Austria in a truck camper. That must have been quite the drive (?lol). They were able to communicate in English, but it was a little difficult. Our kids rock painting craft went over fairly well. We had about 10 kids come out to give it a try. I hear some of the masterpieces became father’s day gifts.

Today is cleanup and regroup to get ready for two camping clubs coming in tomorrow. We have a load of crushed rock on the way to touch up some areas that have taken a bit of a beating from all the rain that we got last week.   One of the clubs has 15 sites and one room booked. The other club has  7 sites. Hopefully things don’t get too confusing as we try to sort out and regsiter who is with which club. This should make for a busy week around here. The forecast looks like it will be great weather right through the week. Could this be the turning point and summer will be here now?

I  had the pleasure of meeting a very nice lady last night. She phoned to make sure that we had a campsite and announced herself as ‘Eloise from Halifax’. It was just her and her dog travelling together in a camper van. She is into the rubber ducky thing so she brought her bath robe in to show me the rubber duckies all over it. She laughed about how in Ontario she was standing in a parking lot in her ducky bathrobe with 6 firemen as the carbon monoxide alrm was going off. She then told me about having a rubber ducky bathroom in her house and now having one in her camper. Then she gave me some ducky wall decals. I was only talking with her for about 10 minutes and it just made my day. She was just that type of person.

I think that we can all agree with the rain rain go away saying today. Things had just started to dry up after the 2 inches we received on the weekend and another 1/2 last night. The weather network is saying that the sun may poke out this afternoon and then just showers this weekend. Man do I hope that they are right. We ar up to 10 sites and 1 room booked fot his weekend so I hope taht it turns out nice . One site had changed from last weeknd to ghis weekend because of the rain so that would really suck for them to end up with a rainy weekend anyway. I have a kids craft planned for Saturday afternoon, but the catch is I need to go out in the field to gather some rocks to paint. My problem is that my shoes are going to come back 10 pounds heavier by the time I am done. 

The guys have been busy getting the mowing finished before the weekend. Dennis has been trying to get rid of an unwanted water hazard near the mini golf. 

In case you hadn’t noticed tomorrow is Friday the 13th. I am somewhat superstitious about some things (I won’t walk under a ladder and you can’t make me) but friday the 13th doesn’t bother me. It is pick your ducky discount weekend so maybe it will be lucky for some. I have to go over later and get my duckies all lined up and ready for plucking.

As I type this I am also watching CityTV’s big breakfast and the weather just finished. Let’s just say that it’s not pretty. The next four days all have showers. Hopefully they are wrong as usual. Seems like they just got finished mowing the grass and it is overdue to be cut already. It feels like fall out there not almost summer.

We got another two hundred trout this morning. The other guys seem pretty happy in their new home so we figured we might as well get some more so they are ready for next season. The big guys should be ready to catch in another month or so. They are jumping quite a bit when we feed them now. One good thing about all this rain is that the pond is nice and full. We transplanted some bullrushes and other plants last week to help the ambiance  and help to stabilize the shoreline too.

We have had quite a few different types of birds around here lately. Lots of finches, blue jays, various sparrows, orioles and even a cardinal. I have been trying to feed them to keep them around, but there are two certain grey squirrels that are driving me berserk. They are always on the feeders either eating the seeds or the feeder itself. Then they have found the bag of seeds and made a mess of it. You know you have a squirrel problem when they go strolling past our front door.

I tried to sit down and write on here a couple times in the last few days and just gave up. I think that we had our Friday the 13th come one week early and I just have not been in a creative mood. It all started with some staffing issues then carried on to Dennis and another person being verbally confronted by a another guest. It is just amazing how one person can view the same incident completely different than 3 other people. I can’t go into any detail becuase at this point I am not sure if it is completely finished yet.

In the end we had only 4 overnight sites here this weekend. The weather scared quite a few off, but it actually turned out to be a fairly nice weekend. We did have a couple from overseas stay in one of our rooms on Saturday. They are apparently looking for a farm to buy in Manitoba. They had a real estate tagent take them around yesterday to look at some places. I wasn’t abale to talk to them much myself (back to the staffing issues) so my infomration is all second hand. I was told that they were looking in the Riding Mountain area. That is the power of the internet for ya. They found us, and most likely the real estate agent online. They were able to organize and plan their trip from a long long ways away. They couldn’t have done that even a decade ago.

Surprisingly I am expecting a camper to come in today in the pouring rain. They phoned to make sure we had a spot open for a couple days and should be here anytime now.

Setting Up Camp

The loaded mini-van pulled into the only remaining campsite. Four children leaped from the vehicle and began feverishly unloading gear and setting up the tent. The boys rushed to gather firewood, while the girls and their mother set up the camp stove and cooking utensils. 

A nearby camper marveled to the youngsters’ father, “That, sir, is some display of teamwork.”

The father replied, “I have a system — no one goes to the bathroom until the camp is set up.”