365 of 365 of What it is Like to Run a Resort

Wednesday, July 13, 2011 - my last blog entry. I said I would do this for 365 days and here is the last day. It was so fun to hear your comments and positive feedback.

I love to write, even if some of my blogs did not show it. Sometimes I was so busy that I couldn't even blog for days. Some days I was too tired to even lift a finger. But whatever the case, I enjoyed it thoroughly overall. I hope you did too.

Wednesday was a fun day. A group went out kayaking and we helped them strap on the kayaks. John mostly helped. I was sitting at the campfire cooking polish sausage for lunch. After lunch I made pudgie pies of apple pie filling and raisin bread. They were very good, especially when cooked over the fire.

Our niece, Jaeden, went out fishing with her new friend, Gabbi. Gabbi and her dad are our customers and they took Jaeden out fishing because the girls are very close in age and have been hanging out together. They caught 10 fish each and then stopped and came back. They were all caught within a hour and a half. They had a lot of fun.

Some customers came into the lodge and played the piano a bit. That was beautiful. We have an old upright piano in the lodge. John and I don't know how to play it but love it when customers do.

Orla, our puppy, has been really tired every evening. She has been playing with everyone and has sometimes even taken a walk with customers on our many woodland trails. She is a wonderful addition to the resort and is well loved. She will love it here and we hope she lives a very long time because she is loved much.

I baked some chocolate chip cookies and then mopped the entire lodge, lodge bathrooms, and my kitchen. I think the smell of the cookies must have floated around the resort. Because I had to turn away at least a handful of customers while the floor was drying. It was a little humid so it took over an hour for the floor to dry. By then the smell of the cookies had dissipated. I think its funny. I love to give cookies to people, so when the floor was done I was a little disappointed that no one asked about a cookie. So I started handing them out myself.

John and I watched the women's soccer match for awhile. Then we relaxed with the kids, our niece and nephew, and sat around talking and laughing. John eventually took a big group out on the pontoon for a sunset cruise. The sunset was beautiful with dark purple and pink stripes in the sky.

There was a campfire and John and Orla sat at it for awhile talking with customers. I was in the lodge with a couple customers while Jaeden played foosball. It was a good day and a good year.

Its hard to believe that a year ago we had a trouble bear here and it was captured on the eve of the beginning of my blog. So it seems strange to end the blog with nothing exciting going on. We are very happy there are no bears, and even the raccoons have left the premises. Oh well. I guess I have to end on a boring blog entry.

Thank you for reading my blog and I hope you enjoyed it. Maybe I will think of something else to write about. But for now, do something fun every day. Life is short. - - Cheri Stratte, Mercer, Wisconsin, Pine Forest Lodge.

362-364 of 365 of What it is Like to Run a Resort

Sunday, July 10-Tuesday, July 12, 2011

There's only one day left of my blog. I will miss it.

The picture is of my daughter, Danielle, who is pregnant. We were at her baby shower on July 3. The cradle sitting on the table is the same one that she was in as a baby, as well as her brother. It was made by Melvin Jacobi, our neighbor growing up. He was like a grandpa to us kids.

Sunday is usually a day of rest for me. I went to church, bought a few groceries, and then came back with the Milwaukee Journal. I took the paper down to the beach and several customers read it as well as John. I then made sandwiches and took those down to the beach for John, me, our niece Jaeden and nephew Tommy. They were swimming with a bunch of other kids. The water was really warm.

Several people took out their boats as they were leaving to go home after the 4th of July vacation.

We had a bunch of people in the lodge in the evening visiting with us and talking. We recently had a group of 3 baby raccoons at the resort and that night the mommy raccoon finally came back and got them.

Monday was another day spent at the beach. At 6 pm we had our pot luck. Some groups didn't bring enough food for their teenage daughters and guests. So all the food was gone pretty quickly. I made a big veggie/Italian sausage/pesto dish as well as a salad. Even though there wasn't enough food, it was still fun and everyone stayed awhile to watch the homerun derby, as the pot luck is a private party. It was pretty late by the time we all went to bed.

Tuesday it was cooler than usual. I could finally bake the blueberry pie I've been wanting to bake. So I did that, and then Jaeden and I went into the girl cave. I call my sewing area in the basement the girl cave. We sewed for a couple hours and when we were done, Jaeden had finished her first quilt top. She didn't like the tedium so I don't think she will continue this interest anytime soon. When I was 9, like her, I wanted to sew badly. My mom and aunt bought me a very old Singer for my 9th birthday. I sewed on that until I was in my 20's. I love to sew.

Jaeden didn't like sewing because she doesn't like to be bored. We did a 9 patch quilt. There are 5 squares that have 9 patches and then 4 squares of matching fabric. When she got to the last 9 patch square, she gave up. So I sewed on the borders. Oh well.

Later in the afternoon a customer's son caught a large musky that was in our bay. It jumped out of the water and they filmed it on video. The musky broke the line and got away. I can't wait to see the video.

I got out some boards, cut them to about 8" X 8" and brought a bunch of stuff up from the girl cave and basement. Each kid who participated got a printed gothic font letter of their first initial. I cut out the letter, which was about 4 inches in height, and pasted it on their board with a glue stick. They then pasted stuff all over the board. They had my old tackle box so they used old tackle. They had my old buttons so they used those. They had my scrap fabric box so they used some scrap and tassles and old keys, etc. They can take them home and hang them up now.

Tuesday night some more people came into the lodge. John and I were watching the All Star game but then we had to visit with customers. It was very fun as they stayed late in the day.

It was a good day.

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July 9, 2011 The picture is of 3 little raccoons who have been frequenting the resort lately. Our puppy just watches them walk by. She perks up her ears a little but doesn't bother with them. Orla is such a good girl.

I got up really early this Saturday morning. My niece wants to help me with all the work and before she gets up, I was hoping to get a bunch of stuff done. So I quickly went downstairs and made some bags of laundry, stripped two cabins, and then delivered the bags. When Jaeden woke up, we were ahead of the game so we could take our time.

We went to the other cabins and started taking the dirty laundry out. We brought the dirty laundry to the basement. We had to put all the clean laundry away and then we stuffed the dirty laundry in that bin for pick up. She was very helpful and we got so much done that we could have some fun.

Jaeden wants to learn to sew. So we spent about an hour sewing while the cleaning girls were working on the cabins.

John and our nephew, Tommy, mowed the lawns, emptied the grills, cleaned out the boats, moved brush from fallen trees, and much more. I had extra cleaning girls so when two had to leave at noon and 1pm, that was all right. It all worked out great. That is until people started to arrive.

At 3:30 pm I noticed a customer unpacking into the Cedar cabin. They weren't scheduled for that cabin until the following week. So I went up there and asked the dad to come down to the lodge because, "I don't show that you are in this cabin." He was rightfully worried and came down to the lodge to find that even our confirmation showed the following week (thankfully not our fault).

So we had to scramble for over an hour to try to find a place for him and his family. We eventually worked out a deal for him with a dear friend who has a rental on the lake. So hopefully we will fill our empty cabin next week otherwise he will have to pay us some of our lost income. The customer was really worried because he couldn't afford to pay for a cabin of the same price this week and then pay for our loss next week.

Our friends, the Schroeders, arrived from Arizona, Milwaukee and Cedarburg. We were looking forward to seeing them and we will have a great week.

At the end of the day everything seemed to work out okay and it was a good day after all.

357 - 360 of 365 of What it is Like to Run a Resort

July 5-8, 2011

The picture is of a tree that fell on Friday, July 1 on our lines and part of it hit our Lincoln too, of course. The power surge of it hitting these particular power lines fried one of the electric hot water heaters at the resort.

July 5th, the day after the 4th, is always a little of a downer for me. Here I've decorated the entire lodge with 4th of July stuff, wore red/white/blue for days, and now its over. I will just leave the decorations up for awhile anyway. Laundry picked up today. I almost forgot to call and when they were able to make it, I did a huge sigh of relief.

John and Dave worked on the hot water heater again. The customers weren't too happy. I sewed the lady a custom, quilted apron in her kitchen's colors and gave it to her. It was hard to tell if she liked it or not at first because she was a little upset about the lack of hot water. But it wasn't there (on the following Saturday) when they left so I think she liked it.

We were invited to a cabin for their famous Korean ribs. They were fabulous. John had just gotten back from a kayak outing with customers. I had to pick up one kayak on Oxbow Lake but the rest of them kayaked back to the resort.

Later John took a big group out on the pontoon for a sunset cruise. They loved it.

I sat on the beach with customers most of the day. It was supposed to rain but all we got were a few sprinkles in between some clouds. John went around to all the garbage containers and made a garbage run. The garbage truck will be coming soon.

Wednesday, July 6, John and I both hung out at the beach with customers most of the day. Some customers went to town to the Wampum shop, which is a tradition. The shop has a lot of fun stuff for kids. Later a small girl was walking around the entire resort terrorizing us all with her wooden recorder whistle.

Thursday evening a bunch of people decided to bring appetizers into the lodge. They had to leave on Friday so they wanted one last hoorah. One of the customers brought in his huge Imac to show us his pictures of his latest trip. They were amazing. He has a great camera and his hobby is photography. We saw awesome pictures of Peru, Thailand and South Africa. We ate food, visited with people and had a great time.

Friday morning two cabins left early. They left us some good food and ice cream too. One of the cabins left in the morning, one in the afternoon. While I was saying good-bye to them, a couple of baby raccoons walked by. They are so cute and I will post their picture tomorrow. After the customers left I went into their cabins and turned off the refrigerators and stripped the dirty laundry from the cabin. I will get a head start doing this.

Friday night our niece and nephew came with their mom and dad/my brother. The kids will stay for a week. They come on Friday evening just so they can help us work tomorrow. They also love it here at the resort. There is always something going on and always people to visit or play with. We love it when they visit too so we can spend a lot more quality time with them. Family is important.

It has almost been a year since I started my blog. I love to do this! I will miss it.

350-356 of 365 of What it is Like to Run a Resort

June 29-July 4, 2011
The picture is of a tree that landed on a cabin on July 1. We will get to that in a minute.

June 29 started out bad when we heard that the Balsam cabin's septic was backed up. John went up there with the metal snake and fed it through the pipe starting at the septic. It came up through the ground half way between the cabin and the septic. That meant that the pipe was broken at that point. So John spent the entire day shoveling out the pipe, cutting roots, replacing pipe, shoveling it back in, etc. It was not a good day for him. Dave helped later in the day and they got it all done.

Friday, June 29 was a good day. John and I spent the day talking and socializing with the customers. It was 92 degrees that day and so we spent it on the beach. Orla and I spent the hottest part of the day in the basement where it was cool. She had just got spayed and couldn't swim.

Around 10 pm a huge wind came up. Customers said they saw a black cloud sticking down like a funnel and that the clouds around it were going in a circle. So they yelled to each other to "Get in the cabins! Get in the cabins!" One of the 20 something girls didn't listen and she was getting laundry off the line when a part of a dead tree fell off and hit her on her back, or neck and shoulder area. She said she heard a crack and then she was on the ground. Later she was taken to the hospital and found that there was no concussion or broken bones but she was very sore. In my opinion she was very lucky that the tree didn't hit her on the head.

We try very hard around here to get rid of dead trees. That particular tree was on the edge of the property on the edge of the woods by the clothes line. So we had missed it.

Another crunch later and we had a customer come down to the lodge to tell us that a tree had landed on the Maple cabin. She was packing up to go to her parent's cabin on the hill, Balsam, with the kids because they weren't sure if Maple was safe. The cabin on the hill was the one that had just had a septic problem. Geesh. So John and I went to Maple to check out the damage. There was a small hole in the closet in the bedroom and the tree was resting on the roof and main power lines. We had just fixed up that cabin and had built a sturdy closet in that corner. If it weren't for that closet, the tree would have probably gone through the wall. There had been a little 5 year old girl sleeping in the at bed and she had slept right through it.

John called the power company and they said they couldn't get out to us until the next morning, and our local power company couldn't come out until next week.

On our walk up the hill to see the cabin, we noticed another tree had fallen right next to the Lincoln. It was hanging on the light lines and power lines to our lodge, Cedar and Alder cabins and had created a power surge. It would turn out later that the Cedar cabin's hot water heater had a fried wire. We and Alder have gas hot water heaters so we weren't affected.

Another customer then came into the lodge to tell us his windshield had been broken by a falling tree branch. We hoped that this would be the end of this trouble. But for the next hour we tried to find a windshield repair service to no avail. We would have to try in the morning. Because it was the 4th of July weekend, everybody said they couldn't get to them until Tuesday. They had to drive to Indiana.

I called the customers who were going to arrive into the Maple cabin and told them we needed 24 hours before they could check in. They said they had other relatives up that week and would just sleep in their cabins on the floor if they had to.

The next morning, July 2, we got up early to the sound of the power company's truck. I called Dave, the only guy we could get out here, to cut with the chainsaw and help us with the electrical. He was here in 15 minutes and he and John worked with the power company for quite awhile. Power was only out for an hour.

The cleaning girls arrived at 9 am and it was hard to get them to get started cleaning. They were all dramatized, yeah I spelled that right. They couldn't believe all the trees down, the people milling about watching the power truck, etc. and the drama of the situation immobilized them for awhile. They finally got going and when the power came back on an hour later, they were able to finish vacuuming the cabin they had finished first.

The fact that we were out of power for only an hour is almost a miracle. The huge tree was lying on the wires and they were stretched pretty tight.

All day we struggled to get everything ready for the coming group. I was down to 2 cleaning girls at 1 pm. Since it was 4th of July weekend, that created a lot of trouble. So I had to help the cleaning girls finish the last 3 cabins. In the process I lost our cordless phone and still can't find it 7 days later.

The customers arrived and all was fine for a Saturday of the 4th of July weekend. Dave finished patching up the roof on Maple so it wouldn't rain inside the cabin. He cut up the tree and other tree by the Lincoln. Then Dave hauled the branches away. John worked on putting caution tape up and making barricades around the fallen tree behind Maple. He then emptied the grills and got the boats ready for customers.

Sunday was the day of my daughter's baby shower. So I left at 9:30 am and didn't get back until dinner time. I got a call from John at 4:50 pm to tell me that a hot water heater in Cedar wasn't working. So I rushed to the Ace Hardware and bought their last electric hot water heater that was a smaller size. I had wanted to go to Walmart to shop on my way home. But John sounded very stressed so I just came home. The customers in the Cedar cabin could use their daughter's cabin to shower so they said they didn't mind for now.

Dave and John tried to get the old hot water working all day. Finally in the evening they got it to limp along for now. Hopefully on Saturday we will change it over to the new one I bought. There are wires that had to be re-wired and connected, etc. so it was a big deal and we don't want to leave it that way for very long.

Monday, July 4 was a fun day. People went to see the parade at 11 am and we stayed home. They said there was so much candy thrown that the kids had grocery bags full at the end of the day. Yikes! Later at 6 pm was our pot luck and that went well. In the evening I loaded up some chairs and took the Landcruiser and customers to the fireworks. They were very good. They had one big rocket go off right at the base of the lighting area and they had to put out a fire. So some of the fireworks were a little delayed but it was still a good show.

Some of our customers made really cool 4th of July hats and were encouraging us to remember what 4th of July is - a celebration. So as I watched the fireworks, I was thankful that I didn't have to worry about losing our independence and that our armed forces were strong. My son is a Marine. He's out of the forces for now but I have learned to appreciate the sacrifice of our men and women who have served. I hope I never forget that.