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

 Six little baby duckies.  Rubber Ducky once again has its duckies. Sarah is busy ducksitting as we speak. We are getting them starting early as a couple will already take the bread right out of our hands.

Come on in everyone, the water’s fine. Give them a little water and they just pile in and gotta get wet – kinda like kids. We will be keeping them inside for a few days until they are ready to be outside.

This past Saturday we were part of a group that put on something called Children’s Rail Day. Basically we offered families from the Rainbow Society and a couple other groups the opportunity to ride the Prairie Dog Central to Warren where they were given hot dogs, ice cream, chips etc. There were a couple kiddie trains for them to ride on and other activities. Our ducky mascot, the Oak Hammock Marsh Duck, the PDC mascot and a clown were all there to entertain the kids. This was free of charge to them, they just had to get to Inkster Station and get on the train. Luckily it was a better weather this year. We also did this last year and it was rainy and cold. There were 200 people committed to coming on the train, but only 90 showed up that day, which was quite disappointing. The kids that were there seemed to enjoy themselves however. The computer gremlins won’t let me post my pictures so I will have to try again later.

a whole lot of fishies. Tuesday was fish arrival day at the duck. To answer the question that we all wanted to know.

They come just like a goldfish from the pet store – in plastic bags full of water. Inside each box in the picture is a big plastic bag with fish. We got 200 four inch and 200 eight inch rainbow trout.

The release procedure is much the same as a little goldfish too. The bags float on the water to let the fish acclimate to the temperature then you let them go. We let them float around for about half an hour before we let them swim free.

These are the ‘big ones’.

Freedom at last. After a 4 hour truck ride they are finally free to ‘keep on swimming’ like Nemo. After we released them they were jumping like crazy. I tried to take a video and if you look very carefully you can see some of them and some splashing. Later on that night we were out checking on them when our two Canada Geese came in for a visit. They had no sooner touched down on the pond when they started honking and heading for the shore. It was a very unusual way to see them acting. We are assuming that they got a surprise and maybe a nibble on the toes from the fish. It was really one of those you had to be there moments because it loses something in the translation. You truly had to be there to see and believe it.

Camping season has officially kicked off in Manitoba. Another May long is behind us and I think that we all survived. A couple more days and everyone will have caught up on their sleep and gotten the last of the alcohol out of their systems.

Our pig roast was a success this year, almost too much so since we had to stop selling tickets. It was very frustrating and disappointing to have to turn people away. We had planned for almost double the amount of people that we have ever had and it still wasn’t enough. I will have to tune up my psychic abilities so I can better predict the future next time.

Saturday was made pretty miserable by the wind. At least on Friday evening it had gone down and people were able to have a relaxing fire, but Saturday it just wouldn’t let up. At some points the dust was just unreal. Of course I did get some complaints about how windy it was in some of the open sites and I understand that. However, this was an unusually windy day even for Manitoba. I wish I could control the weather and I wish that I could make trees grow, but unfortunately I just don’t have that power in me. I also don’t sugar coat those sites, they are wide open and I tell it like it is and it shows it on my campground map. There will eventually be trees around there, but not right at the moment. There are many positives around the campground such as the pool, playground, activities etc; why do some people have to focus on the negatives. OK done my vent now time to move on.

My personal/marketing goal for the weekend for to get a good picture of a group around the campfire. Well it was my lucky night when Trevor pulled the guitar and I had the camera ready to go.

Sunday was a beautiful day for the middle of May. The pool was hopping all day. The kids were having a blast. I noticed one group of campers had organized a scavenger hunt for their kids. We were out for a walk in the afternoon and I came across a little toy pig on the mini golf and I started to pick it up wondering who had left it it there and then it donned on me what was going on. It was a great idea to keep the kids occupied for a little while they were busy running around finding things. The kiddie train was in high demand all weekend too. It never went out with empty cars and some kids would sit in their for almost half an hour to have a ride. Metro was almost trained out by the end of the weekend. Sunday evening was our movie night in the rec building. There was a decent turnout for both movies. First up was the Bee Movie. I would estimate about 12 people for that one. Next up was Mr Woodcock. There was probably about 12 people for that one too. The crowd definately switched though as the little kids cleared out and the bigger kids took over and a couple adults too. I wasn’t able to see much of this movie so I don’t know if it was any good or not, but everyone stuck around for the whole movie. I will take that as a sign that it was allright.

Monday was a pretty laid back day. It rained for most of the morning. Everyone cleared out fairly early except for the local gang who hung around for the day. It did clear up in the afternoon and was not too bad out. The rain didn’t keep the kids out of the pool however. Quite a few were able to get that one last swim in before it was time to go.

I think that we are finally all cleaned up from the weekend. We had to wait for the garbage truck to come this morning before we could put the last of the garbage in the dumpster. The rec building is switched over to meeting format for an ATV Club meeting tonight. I had two campers come in this afternoon. Coincidentally both from Alberta, but heading in opposite directions. One has been in Gimli and is heading home and the other is just arriving here. Time to gear up for another weekend which will be here before we know it.

Enjoy the short work week.

As I write this it is 8:00am  on Monday and pouring rain and it looks like it will carry on for the majority of the day. At least we got one fairly nice day weather wise. The wind on Friday and Saturday certainly put a damper on things. Sunday the pool was busy however, the kids were able to get out and enjoy. It was still a little cool, but at least T-shirt weather. I am not expecting too many late checkouts today. If there is a small break in the rain I imagine there will be a mass packing up and exiting. It is pretty typical for May long weekend. I don’t think that there have been too many without some rain.

I will come back tomorrow to do a wrap up of how the weekend went overall.

Other than a few tenting sites we are completely booked for this weekend. All of our rooms are even booked out during the weekend. This is a good breakthrough for us as they have not been as busy as we had hoped. They have had their good weekends for sure, but this year there seems to be a lot more awareness that they are here. Although we are full and it will be busy this weekend, we say it is a good kind of busy. The majority of campers we already know either from them having stayed with us before or just know them personally. So I am not forseeing any major ‘issues’ this weekend  and it will be as relaxing as a long weekend can get. The weather seems to have straightened around which is going to make things more enjoyable for everyone.

We are slowly working through our to-do lists to get things ship shape and ready to go. Today will be the last day to do the ‘work’ part. We had one camper arrive last night and another two more are coming tonight. So, the weekend is getting off to an early start. We have had a couple from Alberta staying here since Monday and they have just booked for tonight as well.  There was also another lady who came in on Monday that I have to tip my hat to. She has been travelling in a small class C for the past 8 months or so – just her and her dog. She was telling us that she has been to Florida, spent the winter in Arizona and then to California. She managed to find her way through here on her way back home to Ontario, (near Toronto I believe).  She left here on Tuesday and spent the day at Oak Hammock Marsh, then decided to come back for another night. From what I gather she has been visiting friends and family along the way. It takes a lot of courage to do all that travelling on her own. I don’t know many people that would do something like that.