Summer officially starts in just a few days but you would never know it walking outside our door.  I can’t remember a day when the temperature has hit 75* yet and there have been mighty few where it has even broken 70*.   I think it has rained everyday for the last two, maybe three weeks.  Nothing major like we’re seeing in southern Minnesota and Iowa but enough to make us wonder if there is still really a sun up in the sky.
Tree leaves are all green and the garden is finally growing.  The rain has gotten everything off to a good start.  Lake water levels are back to normal after being down so far last summer.  Guests don’t have to use a ladder to get from the docks down to their boats.

Fishing has been excellent except for the walleye fishing.  Lake water temps this morning were at 62*, way below where they should be at this time of the year.  Those low water temps have delayed spawning and probably extended our excellent spring fishing.  Some crappies were still be caught last week with eggs in them.  Blue gills are moving onto their nests now and we should have some great “gill” fishing for the next couple of weeks.  Now we just have to figure out what will interest the walleye.  Of course, the mayflies are  starting to hatch now so that will make it harder to catch a walleye.

Several guests have caught some very nice fish, taken pictures of them and then released them.  Everybody seems to have a camera phone so they use those for pictures. I’m waiting for some emails so I can post some new pictures here and on the web site at www.pineridgeresort.com.

So, even though it’s been a cool, rather wet start to the year, things are going well here at the resort.  Most people this time of year come more for the fishing than for playing in the water so they have been satisfied.  Now we’re supposed to have several days of sunshine with no rain.  It will be good to feel the sun again and it won’t take long for that sun to warm up the water.  Summer will get here soon and then we can complain about the heat and humidity.

On a personal note, my MRI results on my knee were better than I hoped for.  I have a badly sprained MCL (that’s medial collateral ligament for those who don’t follow the language) that needs lots of rest to heal. Like that’s going to happen before October.  The MRI also showed a microscopic crack in my shinbone on the same leg.  No idea how that happened but it also needs rest.  Good news there is that they won’t have to cast it.  So now all I have to do is convince my guests all summer long to take care of themselves so I can sit and watch movies all day while my leg gets better.  I think it’s going to take a long time to heal.

Enough for now.  The sun is shining and I’m going to get outside and soak it up before the rain comes again.

It’s been quite a while since my last posting so I’ve got a lot of ground to cover with this one.  It’s been an interesting month.  Right now, I’m very happy to have summer finally here.  For a while, I wasn’t sure we were going to have a summer.

This past month started out poorly for me.  Taking a walk during that last April snowstorm, I slipped on an icy patch and did something bad to my right knee.  Waiting for MRI results now and then have to decide about surgery.  I get around the resort OK but with a lot of caution.  It has definitely slowed me down during the very busiest part of my work year.  Projects that I really wanted to do aren’t getting done and it is extremely frustrating.

Part of the frustration comes from Donna and I just having purchased new bicycles this spring.  We both love riding and were really looking forward to getting out this summer.  Now, they just sit in the garage.

The late spring really slowed things down and concentrated all the work into a few days before guests started to arrive.  I was very fortunate to have a lot of help getting the resort ready for opening.  Most of the ice went off the lake the day my “Work Week”  people arrived to put in the docks.  We had to wait a couple of days for all the remaining ice to melt and even then, we were pushing small flows of ice away from the docks the day we installed them.

I owe all of them a lot.  I had their names of the web site for a few days but here they are again.

Al and Matt Roehl have been helping me install and remove docks for 15 years now.  Hard to thank them enough.

Craig Martinson and Rollie Stoehr have been coming for 5 years and 3 years, respectively, now, to help.  Craig actually takes a week off work to help and Rollie is retired.  Both love the early spring crappie fishing and caught some beauties this year.

Well, they said we were going to get this and we tried not to believe them, but….. As so noon on April 26, 2008, we had 8″ to10″ of new snow and it was still falling.

The concern, of course, it that April 26 is very close to May 10. And May 10 is opening of fishing season in Minnesota. In those two weeks, we have a lot to get done, not the least of which is melting all that snow and the 8″ or so of ice still floating on the lake in front of the resort. That ice was melting quite well until this storm arrived with it’s 27* temperatures. 27*, if you recall, is below the freezing point of water. So here we are, 14 days before opening of the “open water” fishing season and our lakes are still making ice. See any problems here?

Then, too, there are a few other things to get done. Once the ice decides to go away, we have to put in docks. That’s an all day job for six people. I have my dock crew lined up for next weekend and we have to hope the lake cooperates. My dock crew are all volunteers who give up their weekend to help get the resort ready to open. There is only one weekend left between now and opening fishing. So guests arriving for opening should bring their waders if the ice doesn’t go out soon. We’ll need to put in the docks before we can launch your boats.

We need to clean the cabins. Every spring, each cabin gets scrubbed from floor to ceiling to be ready for guests. Notice that word “scrubbed”? Scrubbing requires water. Water doesn’t flow well through pipes when the temperature is 27*. So we can’t turn on the water to the cabins until this still accumulating snow goes away and lets the ground warm up.

And there are always a host of other items to do to be ready for opener. Getting boats in the water, checking out the motors to be sure they are ready for operation, raking up the lawn, repairing various items that didn’t get worked on last fall and about a dozen other things that pop up. And that’s hoping nothing is wrong when we get into the cabins. It’s unusual not to have to fix a leaking pipe or a loose door.

So I want everyone to thing very warm thoughts for the next few days. I’ll let you know if they work.

So a week ago Friday, on April 5th, I got my new bicycle out for the first time and road a couple of miles.  That evening, Donna and I pulled out the grill and charcoaled some steaks.  The next morning, we brewed our first batch of maple syrup.

Sunday morning we woke up to 8″ of snow on the ground and it snowed the rest of the day and all night.  18″ total.  Nice April Fools joke, right?  But Mother Nature wasn’t done with us.  This past Thursday, April 10th, it started again.  8″ to 10″ more by Saturday morning.  We haven’t seen this much snow in years.  And it was heavy wet snow.  Hard to shovel and hard for the snow blower to throw.

The good and the bad of all this snow.  The good is that it’s badly needed moisture.  We figured at least 3″ of water in all that snow.  Should really bring lake levels up when (if?) it all melts.  The bad is that fishing opener is now less than 4 weeks away and there it a whole lot to do between now and then.  Things that can’t be done until the snow melts, the ground thaws out and the ice goes off the lake.  It’s going to be a close thing to get all that done by opener.

Then there is the really good.  Both these snows have been perfect “sugar snows”.  This kind of weather really starts the sap flowing in the maple trees and it’s running now.  Only tapping a few trees, we’ve already made two gallons of pure maple syrup and there will be at least two more before the weather warms later this week and stops the flow for a while.

If you’ve never had pure maple syrup, it’s a treat you have to indulge yourself in sometime.  You’ll never go back to Log Cabin or Mrs. Butterworths again.

The kids are still in New Zealand.  Last we heard was a few days ago after they got back from a 4 day ocean kayak trip.  Now I like to kayak around my little lake here but to spend 4 days in a kayak would be pretty difficult.  They had a great time, of course.

Then they hoped a train for the southern part of the southern island.  We think they had something else planned but we not sure what.  Makes us nervous.  See my previous post.

So now we just wait and see how long it takes to melt all this snow.  Normally, we put in docks the last weekend in April.  I’m thinking there will still be ice by then although the channel between Girl and Woman Lakes is open. The ice may be melting faster from the bottom then the top.  What we need right now is a string of days in the 50’s to 60’s where it doesn’t freeze at night.  And it’s hard to clean cabins until we can turn the water on.  That can’t happen until the frost goes out of the ground.   Any more unseasonal cold weather and we’re going to need ice augers to fish on opener this year.

Keep our fingers crossed and I’ll keep you posted.

Many of you know that our daughter, Leah, left last September to travel in New Zealand for a few months.  She really wanted to go out while she has no real responsibilities or attachments and visit that beautiful country.  Well, she’s still there, although she has purchased her return tickets home for early May.

She is putting off her return because our son, Evan, got wholly jealous of the fact that Leah was there and he wasn’t so he took a month’s leave of absence from his job and hopped on a plane April 1 to join her.  The two of them should have a great time together.  They plan to do a lot of ocean kayaking and traveling the country to see some really incredible sites.

We have one concern, however.  Evan loves to do anything outdoors that involves wild places, mountains, or water.  But he also has a strong sense of doing it right and being careful while enjoying the adventure.   We’re not quite sure about Leah, who seems to be a bit more on the adventurous side without quite the sense of self preservation that Evan has.  Witness the following photo:

Yes, that’s Leah jumping out of an airplane at 13,000 feet with some guy she met 20 minutes ago strapped to her back hoping that he has a very strong sense of responsibility and an even stronger sense of self preservation.  I didn’t learn of this adventure until we got the video of the whole flight in the mail a couple of weeks ago.  Obviously, since we got the video, the end result was good.

Except now she is trying to talk Evan into redoing the experience.  Fortunately for our peace of mind, we don’t learn of these experiences until they are over.  Like when she told us she had been scuba diving in a large tank with sharks.   Our concern now is which will win over, Leah’s somewhat overactive sense of adventure or Evan’s right-on sense of self preservation.  By the way, Evan, that is not a challenge.  We’re rooting for you.

Meanwhile, back here at the ranch, things are returning to normal after our difficult winter. We’re still waiting for the snow to melt so we can get to work outside.  Hard to believe fishing opener is only five weeks from this coming Saturday.  We need some warm air soon or we’ll be ice fishing on opener.

Say, I found a great web site for those of you who are  fed up with all those unwanted catalogs you get in the mail each week.    https://www.catalogchoice.org/login    Log on and you can tell them which catalogs to want to cancel and they’ll do it for you.  Save a tree.  Cancel those catalogs.

Time to head out and tap a few more maple trees.  The weather report sounds perfect for the next few days for a great sap run.   Can’t wait for that first taste.  Later.

A lot of you who read my blog have been to the resort and had a chance over the years to meet my father.  He loved to fish and he loved to talk about fishing and even last year when it was hard for him to walk and he couldn’t remember how to make the trolling motor work, he still wanted to be out on the lake.  When he was in his apartment in Hackensack, he talked about fishing with his neighbors and couldn’t wait until I had time to get him out on the lake again.
His last years were difficult with his disabilities and the onset of dementia.  On this past Christmas Day, he suffered a stroke that was followed by others and Dad passed away in February. We put his favorite crappie rod and $5.00 for some minnows in the coffin with him so he’d be all ready to go when he got to his last fishing hole.  This picture was taken during better times but it’s the way we all remember him.

Save a few for the rest of us, Dad.

So now it’s time to move on.  Not to forget, but to move on.  In the next few weeks, the sun will finally warm us up, the snow will melt and it will be time to get the resort ready for spring.  It’s been a long winter and I am ready for spring.

We tapped our first maple trees last week but not much sap is flowing yet.  Didn’t tap at all last year and I really miss the incredible flavor of real maple syrup.  Hopefully, next week we’ll start getting some warmer days with some sunshine.  That really brings up the sap.

There are a couple of projects planned for this spring but we are not going to be as ambitious as we were last year.  Quite a few of our guests have all ready signed up for our Work Week to help get things ready.  We need to build a new stair way down to the lake and rebuild the area in back of the fish house so we can set up the horseshoe pit again.

Probably start cleaning cabins around the middle of April.  Have to get the ground thawed out first so we can turn the water on.  One good thing about this long winter past is that we had quite a bit of snow early and it kept the frost from going too deep in the ground.  Septic systems did not freeze up this year.

Shortly after the ice goes off the lake, my dock guys will come up and we’ll get the docks back in.  That’s when I start to get excited.  Boats in the water and the crappies start biting.  Early May usually up to Memorial Day we have great crappie fishing.

Now that the season is ready to get going again, I’ll be posting more often.  I’ll let you know how that first batch of maple syrup tastes and those first of the season crappies.   Just a reminder, walleye opener is May 10th this year.  There are still cabins available for opener but the weekends after opener are almost filled up.

Take care and we’ll see you at the lake.

Been quite a few weeks since I’ve added to my blog.  For our family, it has been a very difficult few weeks and I haven’t spent much time thinking about writing.  As with many people of my generation, we are learning what it is like to care for an elderly parent who is having several health issues.

But our problems didn’t start out with my father.  Shortly before Thanksgiving, Donna made some move she wasn’t supposed to make and pinched or pulled something in her back that let to sciatica.  For those of you who are not familiar with sciatica, count your blessings.  It is a nerve pain that begins in your lower back and extends down a leg.  It is an extremely disabling pain that left her unable to walk for almost three weeks.  She was out of work for five weeks and wasn’t able to return to school until after Christmas break and then only half time for a couple of weeks.  Now she is back to work full time but still has to be careful not to put too much strain on her back.

We had planned to travel to Portland, OR., to visit son Evan for Christmas but sitting in a plane for three hours was not in the cards.  As a matter of fact, she probably could not have ridden in the car long enough to get to the airport.  Fortunately, NWA has  extended the time we can use our tickets for up to a year so we still intend to make the trip.

Then, just when Donna was beginning to feel better, my father suffered a stroke.  It happened on Christmas Day.  A second stroke occurred a few days later when he was in the hospital.  For the past four weeks now, Dad has been in a rehabilitation center in the Twin Cities working to overcome the effects of the two strokes.

We have good days and then bad days.  The worst effect was the damage to his throat so that he could not eat and he has had a feeding tube through his stomach for all this time.  It is only in the last few days that he has been able to eat pureed food and there is still a risk that some of the food will enter his lungs.  He is also very weak and cannot move around without help.

The strokes also seemed to hasten the onset of his dementia. That causes problems with his care because he can’t understand why he has to be in a care center and he doesn’t like strangers around him changing his clothes and taking care of him. Some days, he doesn’t even want us kids around.

We fear there are hard decisions to be made in the near future.  Now that he is eating, it is time to remove the feeding tube.  He will be happy that is gone but there are times when he just refuses to eat and so we fear he will deteriorate further.  The different therapy professionals who have been working with him say that he has reached a plateau  and they do not think he will recover enough to be able to live on his own again. He has made it clear to us that he doesn’t not want to live in a nursing home.  Difficult decisions to face.

Here at the resort, I guess things have gone fine.  I spend three to four days a week down in the Cities with Dad leaving Donna to take care of herself.  Fortunately, she is now able to do that.  Reservations are in very good shape for the coming summer with many new reservations coming in every week.  January has always been a time for lots of activity as folks work out their plans for the summer.

With the early snow in December, we had several parties reserve time for winter vacations. Unfortunately, we have not had much new snow since early December but the ground is white and people have been able to enjoy the outdoors more this winter than in past years.  And the snow insulated the ground so that septic systems are not freezing up this year.  A tremendous good thing, especially with me being gone so much.

Our kids have been busy this winter but I think I’ll wait to write more about them later.  Leah is still in New Zealand and having a ball.  Evan’s jealousy finally got the better of him and he took a month off his work and is leaving to join Leah on April 1.  I’ll fill you in on their travels in a later post.

Probably enough for now.  Almost time to watch the Super Bowl.  I don’t have a favorite in the game but it helps to take your mind off other things for awhile. Just hope it’s a good game.  Take care all.

Ya, but what if the instructions are written by a bunch of computer geeks? It’s frustrating to know all the words in a sentence but not know what the sentence says.

So what’s all this ranting about? At the end of my last posting, I mentioned that I was going to set up a procedure where anyone who signs up can automatically receive each new posting to the Pine Ridge Resort Blog on their email. Some of my guests actually told me that they read this stuff so I thought, since my postings are somewhat irregular, that it would be easier for them to sign up than to keep checking to see if I’ve written anything. Unfortunately, I didn’t understand the directions that were explained to me.

So I had a professional do it. The gist of all this is, if you scroll down a bit and look over in the right hand column, you’ll see a heading that says “Subscribe to the Blog”.  Click the link below that, and follow the directions.  If you can.  If you can’t, give me a call.  I got that one figured out.

Snowing and blowing today.  Great time to read a book, watch some football or ramble on in my blog.  How about the Vikings?  The game tonight with Washington should be good.  Even Donna plans on staying up late to watch it.

Do you like to watch good comedians?  My brother in law told me about Jeff Dunham a month ago and, I have to tell you, he fantastic.  He’s a ventriloquist and he has some very unusual sidekicks.  I don’t think anybody can watch him talk to Walter and not crack up.  Or Peanut.  Now he’s got a new character, Achmed, the dead terrorist.  He has two DVDs  out and they are both side splitting.  Go to www.jeffdunham.com and you can see clips of his various performances.  There are also lots of his clips on YouTube.  I’ve watched them all several times and they still crack me up.  If you have Netflix, you can get the DVD’s from it.

Once again, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.  Keep safe and warm.

It seems pretty silly to get excited about snow in December in Minnesota but I got to tell ya, it’s been many years since we have had good, early winter snow around here. So far, here at Pine Ridge Resort, we’ve had about 15″ of good powdery snow. Most of it came the first few days of the month and it has been cold enough for it to stick around. Since then, there has been a couple of light dustings that refresh the view.
I love to look out our windows and see snow covered trees all around the house. I can follow the deer trails around the house and through the yard. Last night, five deer bedded down under the pines just 20 feet from our bedroom window. There is such a contrast between the snow covered ground and the dark trunks of the trees in the woods all around us.
The other thing about lots of snow that I enjoy is snowshoeing. I can spend hours walking through the woods, following logging trails or just pushing through the brush in the 1000’s of acres of woods close to the resort. When I get lucky, I can sneak up on deer feeding their way along and two years ago, I ended up 30′ away from two timber wolves pushing through about 15″ of falling snow. That was a thrill I will always remember (especially since they didn’t consider me their dinner).

A thick, early blanket of snow has a serious economic impact on the north country also. Snowmobilers, skiers and ice fishing folks head north when we have lots of snow. Winter in northern Minnesota is a real playground when there is something to play on.

Another great thing about early snow is that it blankets the ground providing insulation for plants, animals and septic systems. Lots of animals need that snow to burrow into to stay warm. Donna’s perennials did very poorly this past summer after a very cold past winter with no snow cover. And twice in the past four years, ours and about 80% of the septic systems in the county froze up without any snow cover. Not only is that an incredible hassle, but it’s very costly to have to steam out lines and pump out tanks to be able to use your bathroom all winter.

There is one downside to lots of early snow. This year, deep snow fell before the lakes were frozen. We had open water on Girl Lake the day before the first 8″ snowfall. All that snow has weight and that weight pushes down on thin ice, cracking it and allowing water to flow on top of the ice. That water mixes with the snow and creates slush. The snow on top of the slush insulates it so it never freezes well and that creates a very dangerous condition for people using the lakes. Already, at least one car has gone through Girl Lake. Poor ice can last all year if the snow keeps falling.

And now, the Holidays are upon us. The plan was for Donna and I to be in Portland, OR., spending Christmas with son Evan. Our tickets were for today but here we are still in Minnesota. Donna twisted her back wrong and ended up with a very painful case of sciatica. That’s the big nerve that runs down your back, splits and runs down each leg. She hasn’t worked for 5 weeks and could hardly move for three of those weeks. She is slowly improving and plans on going back to school after the Holidays. We were able to put our plane tickets on ice for up to one year and hope to make the trip west this Easter. Between taking care of Donna and spending as much time with Dad as I can, it’s been a busy month.
With Evan out west and Leah in New Zealand, it will be our first Christmas in 30 years without the kids around. Leah left early in September and she is having a great time. She is WWOOFing. OK, that stands for World Wide Organization of Organic Farmers. The deal is, these farmers provide room and board for people who work at their farms. She spends a couple of weeks at one farm and then moves to another. There are over 1000 farms in New Zealand that participate in the program. It’s really quite an opportunity for someone to travel a beautiful country without having to pay for room and board. And she’s meeting some great people. There are lot’s of WWOOF’ers doing the same thing she is. I’m actually a bit jealous but I know I could never stand the 14 hour flight to get there.

Hey, coming soon. For those of you who like to follow my ramblings on this blog, you’ll soon be able to sign up for automatic delivery of each new posting to your e-mail address. I hope to have that feature added in the next couple of weeks.

Donna and I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukka and a very Happy New Year to all.  Keep safe and warm and spend as much time as you can with family.  See you next year.

There is quite a change around the resort when everyone is gone and the cabins are closed up for the winter. In a very short period of time, we go from being outside all the time, quite active with people around all the time to being inside most of the time with very little to do and no one around for six months. I tend to sit around a lot while readjusting to my winter life style. Mostly, I end up getting fat and lazy.

It would be a lot different if the snow started falling like it did ten years ago. We used to have snow from November into April. Got a lot of exercise keeping the driveway and sidewalks clean and we had guests coming up to snowmobile and ski. Hopefully, those winters will come back again.

Most people look at me funny when I tell them I would love to see 5′-6′ of snow every winter. I enjoy getting out in the woods when there is lots of snow. Snowshoeing is a great way to get out and experience the outdoors. It’s quiet and you get a chance to see critters moving around, unlike snowmobiling where you cover lots more ground but really don’t get to see much.

No ice on the lake yet. Some of the little pot holes have started to ice over but it will be several weeks yet before Girl Lake is frozen. The last few years, the ice really hasn’t been safe to get out on until Christmas.

Opening weekend of deer season was relatively successful. We had eleven guys staying here at the resort and they combined for six deer in two days. Three were nice eight point bucks. I think because of the full moon and the warm temperatures, hunting was a bit slower than usual. The rut had not gotten into full swing yet. Things are changing fast now. Hunters are seeing of lots of rubs and scrapes now and deer are moving around more.

Got a neat picture from Steve Johnson, a regular guest. He was in Colonial and left the shutter open for 20 seconds to get this beautiful moon rise over the lake.

Steve and spouse, Lynette, are the couple who did the video on our web site and have contributed many great photos.

Speaking of which, check out the web site again in about a week.  We have so many photos come to us from guests that I can’t find a place for them all on the web site so I thought I would start a picture gallery.   I have begun work on it and should have it added to the web site by mid November. It may take me a while to get it working right since I am not much of a programmer but I think it will work out well.  If any of our guests have any photos they would like to share for the gallery, email them up.

The mail just got dropped off so I think I’ll close up and wander out to see what new catalogs are there today.  Is it just a coincidence that Christmas catalogs arrive the same  time as dozens of solicitations for new credit cards?  Anyway, this time of the year, the trip to the mail box is about the most exercise I get each day.  Hurry up, snow.