Big Sandy Lodge

Stories1968-1985

 

Sublette County, Wyoming

 

By

 

Betty J Hartley

 

Beverly Roberts

 

Judi A Myers

 

2015

 

The Beginnings of Big Sandy Lodge

 

In 1930 Finis and Emma Mitchell opened Mitchell’s Fishing Camp with tents along the shore of Mud Lake.  Mt Laturio, 11,329’ high, rises in the background.  The area is known as Big Sandy Openings in the southwestern part of the Wind River Mountains in western Wyoming.  The exact location is T31N-R104W-Sec5.

 

Finis stocked fish, by horseback, to over 300 remote, fish-free lakes, making his camp handy for pack trips.  Mitchells had his camp for 7 years before Reed Thomas acquired the US Forest Service lease/permit. 

 

Pinedale Roundup, June 29, 1939:  "Reed Thomas of Green River recently opened his fishing and hunting camp at Big Sandy Openings for the season."  Big Sandy Lodge is inaccessible for about 8 months out of a year.

By 1950 Reed and his three boys, Jim, Joe & Bob had built a Lodge and ten 224 sq ft cabins.  Reed’s wife, Rae, was most likely the original cook, but there is no mention of her.  She died in 1952 at the age of 43.

As the boys grew up & had families, the main responsibility fell on Joe’s shoulders. He acquired the property & forest permit from his dad around 1969 when Reed could no longer take the altitude.

In 1956 a bathhouse - laundry facility was constructed.  Occasionally, a guest would arrive and not realize they had “modern facilities” and use the old outhouses.  Reed’s brother, known as ‘Uncle Joe’ built his cabin on the site in 1961.

 

Joe managed the lodge from Henderson, NV (by Las Vegas) where he was a technical engineer at the Nevada Test Site.  In 1968 Joe brought his girlfriend, Lynn, to Big Sandy Lodge for a vacation.  She fell in love with the country & was soon the lodge manager.

 

In 1982 Joe & Lynn turned Big Sandy Lodge over to B&K Kelly.  The purchase was finalized in 1985.  In 1983 Joe and Lynn sold their NV house & moved permanently to the family ranch near Boulder, WY, about 20 miles from the lodge, and helped Kellys open the lodge the first year after the transfer.  Kellys sold to T. Lightner and K. Cotter in 1999.  The Lodge is currently owned by Dewitt Morris.

 

Many stories have emerged from the years that Lynn & Joe Thomas ran the lodge.  Herein are a few of them.

 

Beverly Remembers

By Beverly Hahn Roberts

 

Each summer my mom, Lynn Thomas, brought my sister, Debbie, and me to Big Sandy Lodge and we helped with all the chores.  The first year we went was probably 1968.  I was10 and Deb was 9. Mom always gave us easy, short haircuts before we arrived. 

 

One day Debbie & I were sitting on the top rail of the round corral watching the wranglers.  Mom called to us, “Beverly!  Debbie!  I need you.”  One of the wranglers turned a surprised look and said, “Those are girls?”

 

After that, mom stopped cutting our hair so short.

 

There was a wood contraption that used to sit across the creek from the lodge in a small meadow near the beginning of the trail.  Joe use the work horses to drag trees down the hill for the lodge addition.  He hooked a blade & belt to the truck engine and the logs were sawed flat lengthwise on 4 sides.

 

An old pump sits in front of Big Sandy Lodge for decoration.  In the years before we went to the lodge, Joe piped water from a spring.

 

I spent many hours being Joe’s errand girl, hiking back and forth from the spring to the pump house for tools.  He’d say, ‘Come on.  We’re going to fix the spring’ and as soon as we’d get there he’d say, ‘Run back down and get me such-and-such a tool’.  I sure learned tools fast, because I didn’t want to bring the wrong one and have to go right back.

 

Joe built the white cabinets in the new addition off the kitchen.  He made them in  Henderson, NV where he lived most of the year and hauled them up to the lodge to install.  He was a master craftsman.

 

The guest cabins were decorated with simple spreads and matching curtains, each cabin a different color.  I was the maid, so I spent many hours in them.  Each cabin had a small wood stove, and wash basin.  Then there was the lodge with the biggest moose head I’ve ever seen.  Mom had the lodge decorated so cute.  Everything was clean, simple and matching.  Outside the kitchen door was an old dinner bell.  The pole for it is still there.

 

My sister & I had our chores and it was hard work for us kids, but we were alone at lot of the time.  When I say ‘alone’, I’m not kidding.  Mom was always so busy.  Her chores were never done.

 

Broken Elbow to Lodge Boss

Betty’s Version

Lynn became the ‘Lodge Boss’ because of a horse accident.  One day during the 1968 or ‘69 season, Lynn was horseback riding through the trees when her horse spooked.  It went charging through the forest, knocking Lynn off.  She broke her left elbow.

 

It was 60 miles to a doctor and she came back with an elbow-to-wrist cast. She quit her job in Henderson, NV.  Her summer visit just got an extension. 

 

She stayed at the Lodge and was sweeping, cleaning, managing her 2 daughters & working too hard.  The bones wouldn’t knit.

 

She finally went to Salt Lake City where they started over.  They put pins in her arm, a cast over it, and then BOUND that arm to her body.  She was gone for a long time and the only communication was when someone brought a message in.  Even the nearest short-wave telephone was 35 rugged miles away.

 

Her daughters were scared, worried and felt like they had been abandoned.  It was especially hard on Beverly who walked down to the gate every day, looking for her mother.  While Lynn was in the hospital in Salt Lake, Joe told her, “Well, I guess I’d better marry you now.” 

 

 The couple married in Dec, 1969 and Joe asked Lynn to run the lodge.  By the 1970 season, Lynn was doing all the cooking for the 8 people who worked and lived there as well as for the 30 plus guests they had all the time.

During the winter Lynn returned to Henderson and worked at various jobs.

 

Joe only came to the lodge periodically until he retired in 1983, by which time they’d leased the camp to the Kellys. 

 

Joe & Lynn were both meticulous in the maintenance and cleanliness of all the buildings and equipment.  When they weren’t ‘wrangling’, the wranglers were kept busy oiling & chinking logs as well as chopping wood for the stoves. 

 

Lynn said, “I was ‘lodge boss’ for two decades as a hunting and fishing outfitter.  I cooked, cleaned, washed dishes, shoed horses, mucked out corrals, cleared sagebrush, fixed fence, and did the plumbing besides packing for and guiding trips into the wilderness.  I learned the whole gamut of the business from bookings to managing employees; from taking out dudes to caring for horses, buildings and equipment.  And, I kept supplies available with the nearest grocery store 60 miles away! ”  

 

Lynn’s Broken Elbow

Beverly’s Version

 

Mom had left very early one morning, before we got up, to help on a pack trip.  My sister and I were only 9 & 10 years old.  We just hung out and played all day, waiting for her to come back.  It soon became night and we had to go to bed, but she hadn’t come back.

 

The lodge staff woke us up and told us that mom had had an accident and they took her to a town far away that I’d never heard of.  No one knew when she would be back.  I remember crying and not knowing what to think about this situation. 

 

We were left with strangers and not even a good-bye from our mom.  Someone came to the Lodge and told us that they had flown her to Salt Lake to see a specialist and that she needed an operation.  More crying and worry.  I didn’t know if we’d ever see her again!

 

She ended up being gone for 2 weeks.  Joe, her boyfriend at that time, was working near Las Vegas and went to Salt Lake to see her, but he didn’t come up to the Lodge because he had to get back to work.  Later I heard that while he was visiting in the hospital, he said to mom, “Well, I guess we should get married”.

 

Finally we had news that mom was coming back.  I don’t know how we knew because there was no phone or communication.  Maybe a letter.  I walked down to the Big Sandy bridge and sat there all day.

 

 I remember the car coming.  It was a big, powder blue color, old model car.  They saw me sitting on the bridge and stopped the car.  The door opened and what a joyful, tearful reunion it was.  Never had I been so happy in all my life to see that my mom was alive and had come back for us.  Her arm was propped up on pillows, so we had to be very careful.

 

Mom told us that she had quit her job and that we would be staying at the Lodge for the summer.  I remember being thrilled with the news of staying & living at the lodge.

 

Blind Charlie

By Betty J Hartley

 

As Lynn Thomas’s high school friend I was invited to Big Sandy Lodge about 1969.  It was my first trip to the lodge, and I was in Seventh Heaven.  I had never been to such beautiful, magical country.  I arrived after dark.

 

 Lynn and her daughters were staying in a small trailer across the creek from the lodge and Lynn said she’d lead the way.  The only thing I could see was Lynn’s white tennis shoes.  She said, “Step where I step”, meaning on the rocks.  I was thinking, “What does Lynn have against flashlights?”  But, we made it safely.

 

The next day was a beautiful Wind River Mountain morning with Mt Laturio reflected in Mud Lake.  I was hooked.  I’d never seen anything so magnificent.

 

Lynn arranged for me to join a large “spot pack” trip.  A “spot pack” refers to packing people’s food and belongings in to a lake and leaving them.  Then returning at an agreed time and packing everything back out again. Sometimes the people ride in and sometimes they hike in.

 

In this “spot pack” the people were also riding, and there were a lot of them.  All available horses were going.  I was at the back of the train, and instructed to keep an eye on the “dudes” ahead of me.

 

Well, my horse, Charlie, kept stumbling over every little thing.  I was getting alarmed. It was a bit nerve wracking.

We arrived safely at the lake, unloaded all the dude gear and were preparing to head back home. I asked one of the wranglers if I could ride a different horse home, because mine kept stumbling.  “What horse were you riding?” he asked.  I pointed, “That brown one, Charlie.”  

 

“Oh, you mean Blind Charlie,” he replied.

 

Blind Charlie!   Really Lynn?   You put me on a blind horse?  Really?  

 

On the return trip I rode a different horse.  All the pack horses plus all the riding horses had to be led, so I was pressed into service leading  horses home.  Not exactly a big deal because the horses knew they were headed home. When I got back to the Lodge I jumped Lynn about putting me on a blind horse.  “I knew he would just follow the others,” was her nonchalant reply.

 

Later that summer, while out to pasture, Blind Charlie walked off a cliff.

 

River Crossing

By Betty J Harley

 

Uncle Joe met me at the airport in Rock Springs, did the grocery shopping, filling the back of the pickup with boxes and bags.

 

By the time we headed out it was getting dark.  We finally arrived at the Lodge,  gabbed for awhile, had a glass of wine sitting in front of the fireplace and then it was time to retire for the night.  Not as simple as one might suppose.

 

Pitch black outside and NO flashlight.  Lynn was in her “pioneer woman” mode.

 

Lynn said, “Follow me.”  Well, it’s a good thing she had on white tennis shoes, for her shoes were ALL I could see.  It must have been cloudy, because there wasn’t even any star light.

 

Lynn didn’t want to use the little bridge because it would be wet and slippery.  So she stepped on stones to cross the water.  “Follow me,” she said.  “Put your feet where I do.”

 

We made it.  The creek was probably only three inches deep but the water would have been mighty cold.  The trailer where we girls all stayed was very comfortable, but there were no indoor “facilities.”  Oh well.  At age 31, WHO CARES?

 

There were four beds for Lynn, Beverly, Debbie and me, plus Poodle Barney, Sheepdog Chico,  Mutt Harry and a pet black rabbit.  Tight quarters.

 

It wasn’t until I woke up the next morning that I got to see the countryside.  It was simply breathtaking.

 

 

Sir Edmund’s Visit

By Betty J Hartley

 

Sir Edmund Hillary visited Big Sandy Lodge in 1976.  He was 57.  This is the man who conquered Mt Everest (20,000 ft higher than Big Sandy Lodge) in 1953, was knighted, reached the South Pole in 1958 and stood on the North Pole with Neil Armstrong in 1985. 

 

Betty recalls, “We girls at the lodge were all atwitter because Sir Edmund Hillary was coming to Big Sandy Lodge on a fishing trip.  He was in the company of several men from Sears.  It seems Sears was going to carry a line of camping and fishing gear with Hillary’s name on it and this outing was part of the campaign.

 

“There were about eight young bucks, acting very silly and immature, trying to impress their boss and Sir Edmund. 

“A spot pack trip took them to a lake where they fished for about five days.  Beautiful weather the whole time.

“Lynn was a big tea drinker and she had many kinds of tea in her cupboard.  She told me to go ask Sir Edmund, who was a New Zealander, what kind of tea he would like.  “Just coffee,” he replied.

 

“Lynn was crushed-----really-----she was crushed.  She had planned on being able to brew him just about any kind of tea he might desire----out here on the edge of the Wilderness in Wyoming.”

 

Coffee, indeed.

 

“The ‘Young Bucks’ had a surprise planned.  They had white tee shirts with a photograph of their boss’s face on the front, celebrating his birthday.  They all posed for photos with their shirts------and they had one for Sir Hillary, too.  He had been knighted by Queen Elizabeth!  Where was their sense of propriety?”   

 

A carbon copy of Sir Edmund’s fishing license has been preserved.  If you look at it closely you will see that Lynn wrote “Eyes: brn.  Hair: blu”.  Betty added, “Perhaps she was the most ‘atwitter’ of us all.

“Sir Edmund died in 2008.  He was a class act.”

 

Purple Pancakes

by Betty J Hartley

 

Lynn dreaded the trip from Big Sandy Lodge to Rock Springs for provisions.  It was a round trip of about 230 miles, a lot of it on rough, dirt road. It was a huge job, took hours, and she always came back to the Lodge with a migraine.  If she was really unlucky she would have to cook for unexpected guests at dinner.

 

Everything at the Lodge was spic and span and neatly organized.   But when wranglers went along with the guests on a pack trip to do the cooking and camp chores they usually returned to the Lodge with disorganized, banged up packages of flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, etc.  Never wasteful, Lynn would put the goods into glass jars and use them up in the kitchen.

 

Well, it was late in the season and the only ones at the Lodge were Lynn, Wrangler Donnie, and I, so Lynn decided to do the grocery shopping, stay overnight in Rock Springs and drive home the next morning.

 

Before she left, she showed me the glass jars stored on the shelves in the kitchen cabinets, containing the things left over from pack trips.  I was to put supper on the table that night and cook breakfast for Wrangler Donnie & I the next morning.  I was also instructed to use the contents of the glass jars first.

 

Cooking is not my forte, but I thought I could handle it.  Warmed over leftovers for dinner were not a problem.  I had helped with breakfast enough that I knew I could make the coffee, scramble the eggs and make pancakes -- with heated syrup.  Lynn would never heat the syrup, but I thought it was much nicer.

 

I decided to make blueberry pancakes.  I mixed up the batter and poured in the can of blueberries.  Hmmmm.  Purple batter.  Well, NOBODY told me to drain the blueberries first!  ‘Oh, well’, I thought.  It will be okay and  maybe even better.

 

I put the food on the table for Donnie, went into the kitchen and came back around the corner.  “How are the pancakes?” I asked in a cheery voice, expecting praise.

 

“Tastes like purple seaweed,” was Donnie’s reply.  WHAT?  I dashed back into the kitchen and studied the row of UNLABELED jars.  Hmmm… you don’t suppose?   Yep, I do suppose.  I had mixed the batch of pancake batter using salt instead of sugar!

 

When Lynn returned and heard what happened she said, “Didn’t you TASTE it first?”  Well, no.  Tasting jar contents wasn’t part of the instructions you left me.

 

Wood Stove

By Betty J Hartley

 

For the first couple of years that Lynn came to Big Sandy Lodge, she had a cook, which is how it had always been handled before she came along.  Clem was the cook and she slept in the only bedroom located in the lodge itself.  The cooking was done on a large wood burning stove that had been acquired from an old CCC Camp and Clem taught Lynn all the idiosyncrasies of cooking & baking with a wood stove.

 

Joe & Lynn had problems keeping a good cook, so Lynn decided she could do the cooking herself.  (Like she didn’t have enough to do with reservation correspondence, grocery shopping in Rock Springs, supervising the packing of the pack horses, all the lodge laundry for employees and ten cabins, etc).

 

Big Sandy Lodge became famous for its meals.  You had to make a reservation in advance.  Once Lynn knew how many would be for dinner, she would pull out enough meat from the freezer to feed that many people.

I really don’t remember how she coped in the beginning, because until the Lodge extension was built, she didn’t have any big freezers or refrigerators and cupboard space was almost nonexistent.

 

In the beginning, Lynn kept a “cooler box” outside for vegetables, eggs, etc.  It was the size of a very small refrigerator, covered in burlap.  She would wet the burlap so the evaporation could cool the box.

 

After a few years, Lynn put her foot down and Joe bought a large gas stove for the kitchen.  Propane was used for the refrigerator and  hot water heaters. 

 

Lynn’s Knee

By Betty J Hartley

 

One time in the late 1970s Lynn, Wrangler Lance and I went for a ride up to Fish Lake Park, where the ground is carpeted with rocks. Lynn was on a new horse who thought he was pretty hot stuff.  That horse bogged his head and went to bucking.  Lynn was not a rodeo cowgirl.

 

Lynn went off and her knee landed right on one of those rocks.  Her knee was all torn up.  Lance looked at me, not knowing quite what to say, and I said, “I’ll walk back.”  His horse was also ornery and I did not want to ride it.

He managed to get Lynn on the horse I’d been riding - nice, tame Princess and lead her bad-boy horse. They started back, leaving me to walk.

 

I was never a hiker, and especially not in high-heeled cowboy boots.  Walking downhill in cowboy boots just INCREASES the “downhill” part!

 

I had been walking along for quite a spell, when I heard crashing coming up the trail and Lance appeared, riding that bad-boy horse.   He’d ridden hard and knocked all the nonsense out of that horse’s head.  Lance was mad! 

Lance was leading another horse, probably not Princess, for I don’t think he would have made her come up the hill again.  We trailed on down to the lodge.

 

We arrived back at the lodge and I found Lynn in rather bad condition and lots of pain.  Ever stoic, she wouldn’t let Joe take her to town until the next morning.  I stayed behind to keep watch over the lodge.

 

They headed off to Pinedale (60 miles away), then to Jackson (135 miles from the lodge).  In Jackson, it was determined that her knee was in very bad shape and she went in for surgery.  The tendons were torn and  had to be re-attached.

 

Lynn was fortunate.  In the hands of a less-skilled doctor she could have remained crippled.  But this Jackson doctor operated on climbing injuries all summer and skiing injuries all winter.  He travelled with the Olympic team.  He was the best of the best.

 

My vacation ended. I went back to Henderson, NV and didn’t see Lynn until the fall.  Her rehabilitation was a very lengthy process, as she tried to stretch out the tendons and straighten her leg.  It took all winter but she healed completely.

 

It’s hard to keep a tough girl down.

 

The Thirteen Men

Part 1

By Betty J Hartley

 

The girls at the Lodge were all aflutter.  Thirteen men from Nebraska were coming for a Spot Pack trip.  We referred to them as ‘The Thirteen Men’.  The wranglers were teasing us girls, saying, “Gee, you smell nice.”

 

The afternoon they arrived it was rainy and cold.  As we all stood around in the living room, trying to admire the view, SIX bull moose came out of the trees and waded into the lake.  

 

The guys were exclaiming and laughing and pointing.  I told them, “Well, as it says in our brochure-------”. 

 

Horses for ‘The Thirteen Men’ were on a LONG hitching rail.  With horses saddled and tied so closely together, all you could see were horse rumps.

 

The Thirteen were waiting for the wranglers to finish saddling and packing the horses.  One dude had something he wanted to tie behind his saddle, but he couldn’t figure out how to do it. 

 

Finally the Dude asked Wrangler Donnie what to do.  Donnie stomped up to the horse and gave it a good whack on its rump.  The horse startled, jumped back and forth and sent a ripple effect up and down the line of tied horses for about fifteen seconds.  

 

When the dust settled, there was a three foot gap between the Dude’s horse and the next one over to the left.

Dude stood there for ten or fifteen seconds, contemplating.  Finally he said, “The next time I need that done, I’ll call you.”  Then he walked up and tied his stuff behind the saddle.

 

The wranglers led the pack horses and the thirteen guys on horseback trailed behind.  The day was bright and spirits were high.

 

The Thirteen Men

Part 2

By Betty J Hartley

 

Well, the weather closed in on those Thirteen Men from Nebraska for all 6 days of their wilderness camping trip.  It was cold, windy and WET.  At the Lodge, we sat in front of a roaring fire, sipped our wine, and spoke often of the dudes.  

 

“Pity.”  “Too bad.”  “Wonder how they are faring?”

 

On the 6^th day, the wranglers saddled up, leading all the pack horses and the thirteen saddle horses to pick up the guys. 

 

The guys were in surprisingly high spirits when they returned, and were singing the praises of “canned peaches and whiskey.”  The wet weather was forgotten as they celebrated their last night at the lodge, all night long.

 

The next morning, they were a rather sorrowful looking lot.  One even mentioned that canned peaches and whiskey had lost their allure.  Back in the kitchen, Lynn wanted to do something special for them, because of all the miserable weather they’d had.  She wanted to make them “Ranchero Eggs.”

 

She took a large baking pan, poured in a red sauce, and then carefully cracked the eggs and placed them into the sauce, so the half dome of the yolk stayed above the sauce.

 

She placed the pan in the oven and baked it.  When it came out it was beautiful - if your forte is huge yellow eyeballs staring up at you!

 

The Thirteen trailed into breakfast, most nursing a healthy hangover. When she placed the dish on the table, several guys visibly winced and looked the other way.  There were a lot of ‘Ranchero Eggs’ left over.  Lynn just couldn’t understand why.  These guys were good sports, but yellow eyeballs in red sauce was just too much.

 

Bringing Home the Horses

By Betty J Hartley

 

As the crow flies, Big Sandy Lodge is 6-10 miles from, as well as 2000 ft higher than, the Thomas Ranch, up and over Muddy ridge.  By road it is 20-25 miles.  In June when the snow has gone, the lodge horses are trailed from winter headquarters near the ranch over Muddy Ridge to the lodge.  This trip is reversed in the fall.  Then the horses were trailed to the Thomas ranch, where they either stayed for the winter, or were trucked out to another ranch.

 

Late one fall, Lynn asked if I wanted to go on this ride to bring the horses back off the mountain from the lodge to the ranch where someone could take care of them for the winter or truck them out.  Of course I wanted to go!  She said she would put me on “Blaze” because he would take care of me.

 

Lynn and Joe had maybe 35 horses, so this trailing was quite a chore.  Joe kept horses for many years and took exceptionally good care of them.  Some of his pack horses were over 25 years old.

 

The horses had to work for three or four months out of the year, and then had the rest of the year off.  Most of the horses knew the routine well.  Trailing them UP the mountain was one thing, but when it came time to trail them back down the mountain  -- it was ‘Katy Bar the Door’.  They knew they were headed for FREEDOM!

 

The wrangler tried to stay with the leaders and I tried to just stay in the saddle.  Over downfall, under tree branches, and through the brush – all at a fast pace.  The ONLY reason I made it was because of Blaze.  When he felt me going off to one side, he would move over and stay under me.  He did it several times on the trip down.  Now that is one special horse!  By the end of the trip I knew what Lynn meant when she said Blaze would “take care of me.”

 

The only thing that slowed the horses down were the two fences that crossed the trail. The horses would get to the fence and mill around, waiting for the wrangler to catch up and open the gate.

 

When Joe and Lynn sold the Lodge, Joe kept quite a number of the older horses, and did not sell them to the new owners.  He didn’t want them to be mistreated through ignorance.  Lynn said that several of the horses they sold died the first year.  You can’t work a horse at 9000 and 10,000 feet like you might at a lower elevation and expect it to winter-over in good health.

 

Winter Break-In

By Betty J Hartley

 

Lynn kept the Lodge and the grounds so spic and span, it was unreal.  She was literally in love with the Lodge, the trees, the lake, the mountains and the entire country.  It almost broke her heart when Joe decided to sell.

 

One summer, when Lynn and Joe arrived to open up the Lodge, they found that someone had broken in during the winter and stayed there for days, making themselves comfortable.  They made a fire in the fireplace in the living room.  They didn’t want to venture out into the cold for their daily “business” so they used the lodge bedroom as their own personal commode.  It all stayed “frozen” until the Spring Thaw and when Lynn got there, the Spring Thaw had already arrived.

 

They tore window and door coverings off in the lodge as well as in many of the cabins.  There were several people in this ‘winter visit’ and they broke into the cabins for the nice, soft beds.  When they departed, they left all the coverings off, allowing winter snows to do further damage. 

 

Lynn wondered for some time who would do such an irresponsible and destructive thing.  Then a friend spotted an article in a 1975 issue of Ski Magazine, written by some cross-country skiers.

 

They detailed their cross-country ski adventure, and THANKED Big Sandy Lodge for making it easy for them to find shelter for several days.  They left $10.  

 

There was no mention of the window & door damage, nor of their using a bedroom for bathroom accommodations!  Lynn was spittin’ mad.  She wrote a reply to Ski Magazine, but it was never published.

 

Lynn’s daughter, Beverly, remembered that break-in and that Joe had a LOT of repairs to do.  She also recalled that the damage from snowmobilers was even worse.  They drove over the top of the lodge roof causing leakage.  Water damage marks can still be seen on the lodge’s inside logs. 

 

Another time, when the lodge was up for sale, someone stole all the animal trophy heads that had been part of the business for many years.  They could not carry the whole moose head, so they sawed off the antlers and took them.  They also stole all the lodge dishes.