April 5, 2024 – Spring is in the air and our season is quickly approaching!
Hi All,
Following our very strange and mild winter has been, well, a strange and mild spring! A little over a week ago we got hit with our biggest snowfall of the winter over three days, that totaled over a foot of snow with quite a bit more in the drifts as it was windy. Since then our temps have climbed right back up above freezing and have even been 45-50 degrees on the sunny days. In the last few days we have seen a very significant amount of snow melt and things are beginning to look quite a bit like spring. We still have snow pretty much everywhere and there is still plenty of ice to go ice fishing, but if conditions stay the same (which they are forecasted to) then it won’t be too much longer and all of that will change. We haven’t been up to check on the road into camp yet. It always takes a little longer up there for the snow to melt being a little farther north, and mostly shaded conditions on the road itself. We are hopeful that we will be able to get into camp early this year though and get a jump on opening up.
We were down in the Toronto area for 2 weeks visiting family in late march, and got home just in time for a big family Easter. Since getting home, we have been hard at work getting our annual newsletter and calendar ordered and in the mail. The last few years we have been sending out our mailout in the spring instead of earlier in the new year as it works a little better with our schedule (stuffing nearly 1000 envelopes takes a bit of time – haha) and this year we are even a little later than normal. Well, better late than never as they say and we are hopeful to get everything back from the printers next week and will have them in the mail shortly after. Thank you for the patience, and hopefully receiving the letters in the spring will get everyone excited for the season to soon come!
We have some pretty exciting changes ahead for this season! We talk about these changes in the newsletter as well, but since we are a little late with those I want to let the cat out of the bag so to speak, on here as well. For starters, we ordered a second Starlink system and some mesh nodes so we can get WIFI service directly in all of the cabins. This has always been something we have wanted to do, but historically haven’t had reliable enough internet to make it work. Well, thanks to Elon, we finally have fast and reliable enough internet and should be able pass that along to all of the cabins.
Secondly, as of yesterday Press Lake Camp is the proud owner of three 4 stroke 25 hp Yamaha outboards equipped with electric start. They will be available for rent this summer on a first come first served basis as an upgrade from our standard 15’s. Although they are slightly heavier than the 15’s, they should push our rental boats quite a bit faster, will be quieter, and will be more fuel efficient not requiring mixed gas. We are asking $300.00 a week to upgrade to the bigger motors (up from $160.00 a week for a 15) and if you are interested in upgrading your rental please let us know asap as I expect these to rent out fairly quickly.
Lastly, we are planning on building at least one new dock this season to replace the worst dock in our cabin fleet, so we can then move the old dock into the campground. Some of the cabin docks are beginning to show their age and the campground has been void of anything resembling a decent dock for a few years, so that should be a welcome upgrade. We will likely do a new dock a season for a few years until all of the older docks at the cabins are replaced and we have a nice fleet of docks in the campground again. We do still have plans to upgrade the bathrooms on cabins 2 and 4 as well, but have been struggling with finding a contractor. We are also incredibly booked up which is an absolute blessing and we are very grateful for, but it makes scheduling renovations a little bit difficult.
Generally we up our price by $10.00 a year to account for inflation. It’s a small increase that no one seems to mind, and it helps us keep up with the times and to invest in some improvements around camp. Well this year we are going to have to up our price by $20.00, still not a huge leap but we like to be transparent about our pricing structure. We are fortunate enough to now be out of all of our debt incurred during Covid, but unfortunately we are operating in an entirely new landscape with significantly increased overhead. Our business insurance has increased 2.5 times in the last 4 years, and as of this season, our wonderful government has imposed another Carbon Tax increasing the cost of fuel. You can expect slightly higher gas prices this summer (we mark up gas prices very little as they are already pretty high and we try not to gouge) but our cost for diesel to run the generators is also increasing. We have big plans to improve things around camp in the years to come and of course the cost of materials and labour have also increased significantly. We are also looking at eventually hiring another staff member as well and will have to cover another salary, so we may have to continue $20.00 a year increases for another season or two, but it won’t be forever. As always we really appreciate everyone’s business!
Well I think that is all for now, I will try to update more once we get a look at the road and can get into camp!
Ryan