Two Teens with a Sign of the Times

Die Jungs (the Young­sters) have put the power tools to use with a wel­come addi­tion to the old oak tree. Along with the new tree sur­round (see Obses­sions and Coin­ci­dences, below) comes a new sign to add a lit­tle Ger­man fla­vor to the com­mu­nal pic­nic table. Schnapps any­one?

Spark­tac­u­lar Fire­works with Own­ers, Friends and Neigh­bors

Our first 4th with all new own­ers was a spark­tac­u­lar suc­cess. Just as our finale fiz­zled to an end our neigh­bors showed up with some out of state fire­works (wow). Mis­souri is truly the show me state.

We are pleased as punch to share our first edi­to­r­ial fea­ture that appears in July’s issue of San Francisco’s hippest city mag­a­zine — 7x7. Here’s a link to their site where we are cho­sen as the place to stay at the Eel River. Thank you 7x7!

Here’s what they have to say:

Though there’s plenty of camp­ing, up the ante a bit with Big Bend Lodge cen­tered on the South Fork of the Eel River in the town of Leggett. The nine-cabin lodge, owned by a pack of local Mis­sion Dis­trict fam­i­lies, grants you exclu­sive access to one of the most tube-worthy por­tions of the river, plus a tire swing and a pri­vate swim­ming hole. Rent one cabin, or get a group of friends together and take them all.

Our new sign is up!

Like just about every­thing at Big Bend Lodge, this was a com­mu­nity effort.  First, Christie had the vision, then Kevin found some beau­ti­ful old growth red­wood sid­ing hid­den under a pile of junk he prepar­ing to toss in the dump­ster,  which Tim real­ized would be just per­fect for build­ing a sign to match Christie’s design.

In fact the process was so smooth it is kind of hard to tell the fin­ished prod­uct from the orig­i­nal pro­posal Christie mocked up with Pho­to­shop:

Hint: the shad­ows give it away.

Around the Bend and Shaded

Folks who’ve been com­ing to the lodge for years know that there used to be two beaches but that one of them has been closed for sev­eral sea­sons. Thanks to our won­der­ful neigh­bor, Jack, who loves to use his mini-bulldozer, the rocks are lev­eled and the bram­bles cleared and we now have a mel­low, shaded beach. It takes a bit longer to get there (hint: fol­low the arrows made out of stones) but it’s well worth it.

Tim’s Tree Sur­round

Each of the lodge part­ners has a par­tic­u­lar thing that they’ve been look­ing at and just itch­ing to fix or change or improve or oth­er­wise put their stamp on. For one it’s unearthing all the vin­tage trea­sures they’ve caught glimpses of over the years, for another it’s adding stor­age space to the kitchens. For Tim it was pro­tect­ing the exposed roots of the tree that shel­ters our com­mu­nal pic­nic table. For the past few years Tim has been look­ing at that tree and fret­ting that it would die, so the minute we bought the place he moved into action, design­ing and build­ing a sturdy struc­ture. (Take a look at it when you visit, you’ll see that it’s engi­neered and built really well.)

So where did Tim learn his skills? Now this is where the coin­ci­dence comes in. Or kismet or what­ever you call that small world moment that you’d never believe if you saw it in a movie. Turns out that Tim learned build­ing and mechan­i­cal skills and a deep respect for craft from Char­lie and Ed Gra­ham who ran an auto repair garage in Mill Val­ley where Tim worked all through high school and col­lege. Tim says, “they spoke often of their prop­erty ‘up on the Eel’ and I always wanted to see it, and par­tic­u­larly the saw mill Char­lie had built with a WWII-vintage air­plane 12 cylin­der radial engine as the power plant.”

Well, right after Tim fin­ished build­ing the tree sur­round, he ambled up the road to visit our imme­di­ate neigh­bors and learned that the prop­erty directly across the river from us is in fact the very same place that the Gra­hams had talked about! Hap­pily, it’s still in the fam­ily so Tim can finally ford the Eel River to see the stone house that Char­lie and Ed built. Oh, and that saw mill? It was built to replace the orig­i­nal one that the Gra­hams and Ace Anthony used to mill the lum­ber that was used to build Big Bend Lodge.

So much has hap­pened in the past few weeks. We’ve filled a 40 yard dump­ster with debris, ren­o­vated 2 bath­rooms and fine-tuned 5 kitchens (well, the old gas stoves are still finicky but they cook so well and look so great) and painted and dec­o­rated two raw cin­derblock units. We found some amaz­ing trea­sures tucked into the many nooks and cran­nies and are spread­ing them through­out the rooms and lodge. We hired amaz­ing innkeep­ers and fur­nished their quar­ters with things we loved from our own homes. And last but not least, we man­aged to find time to for a super fun Easter egg hunt.

Look­ing for Easter Eggs

So much fun!

That’s us. We’ve heard that peo­ple have been search­ing for our lodge and didn’t know that we’d changed our name back to the orig­i­nal Big Bend Lodge to honor our new hero, Ace Anthony, the orig­i­nal builder and owner.

For those of you who stayed with us in our pre­vi­ous incar­na­tion, we’re keep­ing the place as com­fort­able and laid back as always with just a bit of updat­ing to the areas that the pre­vi­ous own­ers couldn’t get to. We don’t know how they did it — we’re work­ing like crazy and we have 13 adults and 10 chil­dren to help. But don’t worry we’ll be ready for guests on May 25th.

Yippee!! See you up at the Eel!