It is opening day here at Eagle Falls Lodge. Whether we are ready or not. I think Travis would agree that given the circumstances we did a bang up job. He also may be wobbly with slurred speech when you ask him. That guy. He stayed up all night getting the camp in ship shape. Purely powered on Mountain Dew and Timbits. If you don’t know what Timbits are read here. Go get some – pronto.
So you know the ice we were so frantic about? Of course you do, it is all we have been talking about on this blog. Well, we should have some fishing news/photos VERY soon. But back to the ice. So we were pleading on Wednesday and Thursday for it to melt. Thursday we went to town in the afternoon banking on the fact that we would be able to cross Red Lake with the barge. No such luck. First we found out the barge had some, lets say “issues”. Cue panic. It took some time coming up with a plan on how to deal with that, ughh. We quickly regrouped and launched the deck boat thinking we could at least get some other supplies out to the camp. We got the deck boat launched and loaded (read: FULLY LOADED -with merchandise, maple creme cookies, all our files, etc.) and finally left the dock at about 8pm. You know, when the sun is setting.
This video was taken right after you leave that first bay and get into open water. And this is what we found (click link to watch video).
Video: Ice on Lake
Meanwhile, Cosmo had been stuck in our room at the lodge for about 13 hours while we did all this crazy town stuff that we hoped would end in getting the barge and 4-wheeler out to camp. That boy, has a bladder of STEEL.
Neither of us could support the “hacking our way across the ice for the 2nd time” option with about 45 minutes of daylight left. That left 2 other options, well 3 actually:
1. Drive to Black Bear Lodge and see if they would let us take a motor back to the boat at the end of Parker, drag said motor to boat, launch boat, and cross Parker back to the lodge. All in the dark.
2. Drive to Black Bear Lodge and see if any of their guests had successfully made it as far east on the lake as our lodge and take a Red Lake boat and hope for ice-free passage back to the lodge. All in the dark.
3. Spend the night at Black Bear Lodge, which meant abandoning Cosmo. I was not in favor of this one.
We quickly discussed the options, decided to leave everything on the deck boat uncovered (you know where this is going, right) and scoot out to Black Bear Lodge to try and maximize the very little amount of daylight remaining. Oh yeah, it totally rained on all our stuff.
We did make it back to our lodge via Red Lake. It was maddening. The ENTIRE lake had to be free of ice except for the last little bit blocking our access to the barge (and thus the 4-wheeler).
So, thats what our Thursday night was like. You would never believe that video was taken less than 2 days ago. Today it is in the mid-80’s. Its nuts. Its Canada. And somehow, I kind of love it. Happy weekend, folks.