Pine Ridge Resort News & Views

Here we are in the middle of August and summer is almost over. It seems to have flown by like it always does. We have had great weather except for a lack of rain, the fish have been biting fairly well and everyone has had a great time.

But it always seems like when things are going too well, that something comes along to burst your bubble. We had that happen a couple of weeks ago.

It was the night the bridge fell in Minneapolis. Donna and I were watching the coverage, like everyone else, not quite able to believe what we were seeing, when there was a knock on the door. A guest was there and said, “Terry, I think we have a problem. There is water in the basement of the cabin and we don’t have any hot water.”

That cabin has a sewage ejection pit in the basement and I feared the worst. Something had been flushed down the toilet that wasn’t supposed to be and it plugged up the pump and everything that went down the drains after that flooded out into the basement.

I’m going to leave the rest to your imagination. It was awful and it took days to get it all cleaned up and sanitized again. Two gas water heaters were flooded and had to be replaced but the we caught the water just an inch below the level where it would have ruined the brand new $2000 furnace. So it could have been worse.

And when you put it in perspective, it was nothing compared to the tragedy of the bridge collapse. One of our guests here this week was in traffic just 1 block away from being on the bridge. It is still hard to watch the coverage and look at the pictures.

Often, when things seem to be going badly, I think about how much worse they could be, and often are, for others. Several of our guests have done tours of duty in Iraq and, thankfully, returned safely. So we count our blessings and do what we can to help those who have had difficulties much worse than a backed up sewer.

On a lighter note, some of our younger guests have had some great fishing this week. Joey Braun caught a beautiful walleye one morning this week. His picture is on the web site. Joe Richardson caught a big crappie off the dock. His picture is also on the web site on our “Fish Pics” page.  There is a link to these pictures on the menu to the right of the blog.
We had our second crayfish boil here last night and had about 50 pretty serious crayfish eaters on hand. As always, half the fun of the boil is being able to play with your dinner and Luke Anderson, seven, was right in the middle. Here’s a picture of Luke with dinner in hand.

It was a great night for crayfish, sweet corn and potluck. Next weeks group has already requested their boil so we have chef Dan all lined up. I’m sure there will be a picture or two for the next blog posting.

Take care.