Longer Hours!!!!!!

The forecast for this weekend looks pretty promising: 60 degrees and sunny! Could spring be just around the corner? We can only hope! Starting this Saturday we will be open 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily; but we will close at noon on Sunday. (At least for this Sunday, and we'll let you know about next Sunday -- it all depends on the weather and traffic.) As you know, between now and Memorial weekend our hours will continue to get longer. I'll try to keep you updated here as we change the hours. So... if you've been waiting for a nice day/weekend to come down and check on your boat, why not make it this weekend?!

Normal for Now

Well, other than the fact that it snowed an inch last night! AND... it's supposed to hit 50 degrees today, things are pretty much back to normal at the dock. What little ice we did get last week finished melting over the weekend. And all that rain (here and everywhere else) brought the lake rapidly back up to normal pool practically overnight.

Click here to check out the lake level forecast on a daily basis.

Ice, Ice Baby

Despite what this looks like, we really didn't get any of the ice that was predicted for last night; just a few icicles on the trees. Highway W is clear, at least our end of it. And our driveway and sidewalk are, too. I think most of the ice stayed north of us. I heard Ava (45 miles north of Pontiac) had it pretty bad, and Springfield, of course. All the schools in southwest MO are closed again today, including Ozark County schools. Some of the side roads must be slick. Anyway, I figured some of you might be wondering how we fared down here, and I'm happy to report just fine. Chins up, everyone. Only 37 days until spring!

Beaver Patrol

There is a beaver on the loose at PCM. The darn thing chewed this tree down! It's 8 feet tall and about 9 inches in diameter -- the tree, not the beaver. I've never seen the animal, but we know he exists. You can see where he has chewed down trees and limbs along the shoreline, and he leaves debris in the water. (Plus, there are reported sightings by a couple different PCM customers.) We found this tree floating under the walkway. We assume he was trying to swim it to his nest (which we believe is under one of the old docks near the office), and he either couldn't hack it (I could barely lift it!), or he got startled and dropped it. Either way, now he'll have to walk right up to the front door to retrieve it. We'll see how brave this beaver really is.

Meanwhile, does anyone out there have any bright ideas on how to catch a beaver?

TONS of snow

The sun shone all day yesterday, and temps were well above freezing. So a good portion of the snow melted. Today it's supposed to be sunny again and even warmer (50s!!), so I'm guessing (hoping) the rest will melt. Overall the docks made it just fine in the snow. Had the crew not shoveled those roofs, though, who knows? A couple of the older ones were really sitting low with all that extra weight on them. Speaking of weight, Tim did a little calculating, and he figured they shoveled 65 tons of snow -- or 130,000 pounds!! Wow! I know, it doesn't sound believable. But numbers are his forté. So I'd say that's pretty darn accurate. And they didn't even shovel all the roofs -- they didn't touch the 200, 500 or 800 docks. And on the roofs they did shovel... they only pushed about 8 feet off each side. So just think how many more tons were still up there! Wow!