February 8, 2022 – A little housekeeping and what we will be up to for the next few weeks

Hi All,

Not too much has changed up here since my last post. It seems if the weather isn’t crazy cold then we are getting snow. We have seen more snow this winter than we have in a long, long, time and it’s still only early February. As much as we are sick of having to shovel so much, our lakes really need it and hopefully we will see good water levels in the spring.

Lindsay and I are still trying to get out ice fishing whenever we can and recently had another 2 night stay in our new hut fishing for crappie near Dryden. The fishing was a little slow but we were joined during the day by Lindsay’s dad, grandpa, and their friend Jim which made the drive over worth it fish or no fish.

We haven’t been out in a about a week though, and won’t be out this week either as I am trying to complete a fairly lengthy “Honey-Do List.” I am headed to Thunder Bay on Thursday to join a friend from there, plus two more from southern Ontario for a 5 day ice fishing trip. My friends uncle has graciously let us use his cabin which is on a lake trout and walleye lake, and is surrounded by many stocked lakes with brook or rainbow trout, and additional walleye and lake trout lakes as well. This is our second winter doing this now and we are all really looking forward to it, especially because we don’t get t see our friends from down south very often. We are hoping to be able to hit a different lake every day and do some exploring around to new country. Hopefully ‘ll have some pictures to post when I get home!

The busyness doesn’t stop there however. I will only be home from fishing for two nights and then Lindsay, my mom, and I are headed to Winnipeg to catch a plane to New Orleans for a two week vacation. We will be there for the last week of February and the first week of March and through Mardi Gras. So far we don’t have many plans as we don’t like to travel with too much of an agenda, but we are excited to explore the city, the food and drink, and the culture! Plus it will be nice to be somewhere that isn’t so cold for a little bit, haha.

I will be setting up an out-of-office autoreply on our email for the three weeks that I am gone with any important information, and will handle any reservation inquiries in the order with which they come in. I will be keeping an eye on my email and will answer any pressing questions if anyone has any, but of course will be away from our schedule until after the first week of March.

Well I think that’s about all that is new with us, so on to just a couple of housekeeping items I want to have posted on here. To start, it seems that nothing has changed with the protocols for crossing the border. You will need to be double vaccinated, have a negative test taken within 72 hours of crossing (info about crossing the border and what tests are accepted can be found here: https://travel.gc.ca/travel-covid/travel-restrictions/flying-canada-checklist/covid-19-testing-travellers-coming-into-canada), and you will need to have completed the questions asked in the ArriveCAN app; also within 72 hours of crossing. If you have any further questions I recommend calling the CBSA at 1-800-461-9999 and talking to a real person as the website can be difficult to interpret. I will update this information again as well as Canada’s current Covid restrictions as we get much closer to spring in case anything changes.

Secondly, we are implementing a more formal cancellation policy. Now that the borders are open, and the vaccines are available, travel is possible again and we are no longer rolling deposits over to the next season if you can’t make your trip. Of course that will change if the border were to close down again, but as long as travel is permitted we are holding reservations like a typical year. We have decided that we will work with a 4 month lead time to return deposits in the event of a cancellation. As long as your week starts more than 4 months ahead of the date you are cancelling we will return your deposit, otherwise we will have to keep it as we will be very unlikely to rebook that cabin. We are really excited to get to see everyone again!

Lastly, we will be reviewing and updating our pricing when we get home from Vacation in March. It has been a number of years since we have done this and we have decided it’s time to review and adjust again. We won’t be changing anything dramatically, we have always only ever raised our price by $10.00 per person, and will keep to that rule moving the weekly rate from $340.00 to $350.00. We will also be adjusting the boat and motor prices, bait, etc. but again they will be very small increments. I’ll mention when we have the new numbers in a future blog post and will update our pricing on the “Rates” page of the website.

Well I think that is all for now. It will be a little bit before I write on here again but hopefully I will have lots of stories and pictures to write about when I get back!

Thanks,

Ryan