The end of the ski season for vacationers just means the start of the repair and refurbish season for us.  Time to get the chimney cleaned, septic pumped, and furnace serviced.  Time to inventory the pots, pans, dishes, and utensils.  Time for the deep clean, sheet rotation, and carpet shampoo.  A surprise repair this year was the replacement of one of our bear-proof trash bins.  We think this guy had something to do with the destruction…So as we get things ready for the summer crowd, we’ll be reviewing our guest feedback to see what we can do to make their stay at Blue Owl Lodge as perfect as possible.  Some things we can’t really change, like the location of the house or how well our tupperware drawer is organized, but some things we can change, like the sharpness of the kitchen knives.  And yes, those we’re all things that people wanted us to improve.

Thanks to all of our guests.  We hope to see you again next year.

Well last night was another fun night at the Rocky Mountain Raptor Program’s 19th Annual A Second Chance At Freedom Gala Dinner and Benefit Auction. From the looks of things, it was another record-breaking event for RMRP in terms of attendance and donations.

As we have done for the past four years, Blue Owl Lodge donated 3 nights as a biddable item during the Live Auction portion of the event. The entire amount of the winning bid goes to RMRP. We haven’t been keeping score, but our best guess is that we’ve helped raise close to $6,000 over the past four years. We’re honored that the RMRP continues to welcome us to this prestigious event and give us the opportunity to give back to the community we live in and support such a fantastic, noble, and important organization.

Well the new website is just about done.  Thanks to WordPress, I think my longtime obsession with doing things the hard way may finally be over.  I had never used WordPress up until a few weeks ago when Dyanne asked me to create a WordPress website for her real job.  At the time, I didn’t know anything about WordPress, and I had it in my stubborn head that it was just a blogging platform for people that don’t know HTML.  So I took a few minutes to learn about it, and get the basic setup running.  Then, like I always do when presented with a new toy, I started to dig deeper.  That’s when I discovered Plugins!

For decades, I’ve been trolling around the internet looking for JavaScript to make blueowllodge.com (or any other website I managed) a sophisticated website that rose above the typical canned website.  Once I found a compatible JavaScript code, I then had to set about learning and decoding it so I could customize the fit and finish to make it seamlessly integrate with the rest of our website content.  If I had to delete or add pictures to a gallery or even update prices, I always had to dig through pages and pages of HTML and PHP code to find what I needed.  For example, I wanted to create a standard contact-us form for the new website.  On the old website, the contact form was a 247 line PHP script.  On the new website, I use a Plugin called “Formidable Forms” to graphically create my form, and then I put 1 line of code into the webpage to make the form appear.  That’s why WordPress Plugins are my new best friend!

So even though the re-design has taken me about a week to work through, most of that was due to my insatiable appetite for knowledge as I tinkered around with the WordPress trying out different Plugins for things that I could only dream about doing on the old website.  I hope you enjoy the website redesign and drop us a line if you have any thoughts you’d like to share.

We have no doubt that we will spend more than a few nights discussing the details of this winter while enjoying a glass of wine or beer at our favorite Breckenridge restaurants. We definitely learned some lessons about ourselves, but also human nature in general. All of our tenants have given us positive feedback and many of them have taken a genuine interest in the house and provided us with some ideas or suggestions. Some suggestions are so obvious we can’t believe we missed them, like putting a rug in the hallway. Some ideas are surprising, like providing a vacuum cleaner… we never thought people would want to vacuum while on vacation. No matter what the suggestion we’ve spent many nights discussing all them; we really are our own biggest critics. Most of all however, this winter reinforced something we had already believed and that is… if you model your business to serve your clients the way you would want to be served, then success will follow.

The most painful part of the entire process, as we expected, is deciphering local and state regulations. Water rights, in particular, simply boggle the mind (both in complexity and price), but the local water-people (for lack of a better term) have been pretty helpful in letting us know how much tribute each beuracracy gets so that we can use the water from our own well to fill a hot tub.

As the final month of summer fast approaches we only have a few more weekends of being able to sit out on the deck and enjoy the dry 75 degree air, the smell of the pines, and the sounds of the humming birds zipping around the yard… but now we’ll look forward to sitting in the spa and letting the jets do their work while snowflakes fall on our heads.

The old deck, while it had a great view, was impractical because we could not access the deck without going through the house and this made it impossible to contract with a snow removal company to clear the deck during the winter. The old deck planking was also composed of an inexpensive pine that splintered easily and required annual sealing and painting. And last, but not least, was the fact that the old deck rails were 6 inches apart, which is 2 inches more than code.

The new deck now wraps around the south side of the house and meets up with the driveway so it can be accessed without having to go through the house. We chose Trex as our deck planking due to it’s durability and the fact that it’s practically maintenance free… a big bonus for a rental property. We also picked out some really nice metal rails (up to code of course) that allow you to choose a custom center-piece. We were split between the elk and the mountains so we chose both. Lastly, and almost as important as the direct access feature, is that we had the contractor build in a space for a hot tub! The previous deck just didn’t have room for anything bigger than a 3 or 4 person hot tub, nor was it designed to support the weight of one, and when you’re renting a home to between 12 and 17 people… well that just wouldn’t work. The new deck has been designed to support as large a hot tub as they sell and provides us the space to have one installed.

Now we just need to figure out which hot tub to buy.