May 17, 2013: I flew back to the lodge a couple of days ago and things are looking better than expected with the ice. We now have enough open water in the back bay to land the float plane and the ice in the big parts of the lake has really taken a beating over the past few days. Gorgeous weather today, we were in T-shirts at 8:00 a.m. working on the ice building a wave breaker this morning! I have water running in the lodge, the staff cabins and a couple of other cabins, I’ll get the other ones going as we need them.
Our big freight and fuel haul is already in progress, the Crop Duster landed late this afternoon with the first 800 gallons of premium gas for the boats, 4 more trips of premium, then 3 trips of diesel to run the generators and heavy equipment, and 3 more loads of Av gas for the float plane. The freight plane will be flying in the motors, beer, pop, propane etc. It will be a busy couple of days with lots of planes coming and going on our runway! We might see a couple of showers tomorrow, but otherwise the weather looks great!
The water is very low this year, I’m hoping it will rise as the ice leaves but so far it looks like we’ll be replacing a few props this year. The Pike are in the shallow bays, we saw them while working on one of the docks in the back bay, we’ll launch a boat soon and see if the Walleye are spawning in Mink Creak yet.
Looking forward to our first guests arriving on May 26th, I’m no longer thinking the ice will be a problem, thank God for this weather!!
