Black's Cliff Birch Bark Blog

Excerpt: Beautiful start to the week. Everyone this morning had a fishing pole in their hand and the crappies were cooperating Especially if you have a dad to help you out And a good net The ability to cast like a pro The ability to let go your first big catch the dock The ability to bravely get in a... Read more

Excerpt: at My 2nd day of Grandma's taking pictures of Grandpa's and the rest of the family fishing while she takes the pictures. I have determined that there are very few pictures of Grandma's out there due to this fact. My previous blog entry was all pictures Ruth Grady took of her family fishing and now Annette is my grandma of... Read more

Excerpt: Mike and Ruth are on their 25th year coming to the resort. Lots of good times but spending time this week with their grandson Bentley was among their favorite A boat, a cabin and a grandson for a week, life does not get much better First bluegill. What do I do with it grandpa? I am happier when they... Read more

Excerpt: It was a beautiful Memorial Weekend. 70's for temps and no rain Saturday and Sunday. Perfect for enjoying the first days of summer The water tramp made it out on the water to join the raft. Grant and Quinton helping Troy get it set on the anchor. They wanted to go water skiing but the red boat is not... Read more

Excerpt: Beautiful morning at the lake. Mack stopping for his morning drink. He is happy to have the swimming steps back in. Much easier for an old guy The Blankenburg family were out fishing for crappie this morning. The spawning fishing season is in full swing. The Lillies of the Valley have finally sprouted up atleast a week behind. Usually... Read more

Excerpt: Rosebreasted Grosebeak stopped by when he heard and a bunch of his friends.... Someone at the resort turned 50 not saying who but there was much fun had by all.... After a long week of work getting the resort ready everyone was ready for a party. Ben and Grant tired and thinking finals week was easier than resort opening... Read more

Excerpt: It has been a busy week. Besides all the work going on with the late spring Bryon has moved our website to a different more secure server and there have been days of things moving over from servers including the blog. While that was going on Ben and Grant made it home in time to help with resort opening... Read more

Excerpt: The lake has opened up and the loons are back. We heard our first loons a couple of days ago. There was supposed to be a poser in this picture on the dock..... I swear he knew before going to the lake that I would ask him to pose out on the dock because he would not come down... Read more

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Excerpt: The lake is very quickly heading to ice out. The darker it gets the closer it gets to open water The raft is floating free today of its ice winter home View off the hill today of the darkening lake. The small pond by Save More Grocery store is ice free today it is always the lake that opens... Read more

Excerpt: With warmer temps this week we have spotted our first open water. I am sure the ducks are not far away. Temps going to 65 on Saturday will get things really moving along melting I caught Penny down on our side of the lake looking forlornly at her swimming hole. It will be a few more days before we... Read more

Excerpt: We are slowly melting the snow from the big storm last week. Hopefully the resort looks less white in a few days. We have warmer temps and rain headed our way and that should hurry up the melting. I think Steve is taking the plow off for the last time this week. Hopefully that is a good sign. I... Read more

Excerpt: Snow melting slowly away. For the past 2 weeks I have been dealing with computer key board problems. My computer went to visit the Apple gurus in the mail and all is well again. I can type 9's all day now. Before I had keys acting up all the time. I had tried to update the blog with my... Read more

Excerpt: Troy and I just returned from our final little spring trip before getting in to spring clean up of the resort. We left spring like Missouri to return to snow still on the ground. The lake is slowly turning colors I will post tomorrow Steve's updates on Bear Den We went to the largest sock machine gathering in the country... Read more

Excerpt: We have had a busy week getting resort ready and bouncing around to important family events Number 1 this week was a big congratulations to Grant who graduated from Saint Norbert College on Sunday. It was bitter sweet seeing our youngest graduate but we know he is ready to take on the world For now that means running a... Read more

Excerpt: I see lots of stressed out people arrive at the resort who just want to unplug from technology, phones and traffic. You have so much more come at your these days. Today I had to deal with my computer which the nine button has decided to not work. Periodically my key board decides to throw me for a loop... Read more

Excerpt: We are starting to see signs of melting. The lake is slowly changing color around the edges and the beach has been spotted under all the snow. July still seems a long way off With all the melting it is uncovering all the branches that came down in the ice storms this winter. We are going to have quite... Read more

Excerpt: We returned home to some definitely warmer temps. This squirrel was soaking up the warmer rays in the trees. There is still a lot of snow and ice to melt but it is slowly going away While we were gone Steve and Chris Moran put in 14 new counters around the resort along with sinks and faucets. I have... Read more

Excerpt: The Gibson family is on spring break this week and off on a trail, We get asked all the time where and when do you get away when you live at the resort. Spring Break is a great time to get out of the woods for awhile. Never fear Steve is back at the resort keeping everything humming along... Read more

Excerpt: Spring has sprung and it was time to tap the trees. The thick snow made getting to the trees hard. I adjusted what trees we were tapping due to the snow depth. I have abandoned the trees at Eagles Nest as getting in out of there would have been thigh high to waist high snow. Instead I put more... Read more