Hard to believe we are already in the middle of July and half of the summer has passed! July has been unseasonable cold, and up until a few weeks ago where we have received nearly 3″ of rain the past two weeks, very dry. Overall it has been a beautiful summer with some fantastic sunsets, starry skies and not too many fallen trees on the trails.

This summer we continue to be busy on the trails, mowing on the ski trails and fine tuning the mountain bike singletrack. It’s always great seeing riders out and visiting. Once again, we will be hosting the Laddies Loppet mountain bike race, as part of the Minnesota Mountain Bike series.

The weekend will obviously be a bit different this year with no lodge and the cross country race will be held on Sunday, like the other races in the series. There will be no short track race this year. We will not have any lodging available, at this point, but will allow camping like previous years. We are still working out details for food trucks and concessions but either way plan on a fun day of mountain biking and family fellowship, while racing on Maplelag’s signature singletrack.

The biggest news to report is the start of remodeling on some of the cabins. This past week we began work in the Brant cabin to be used as a day lodge like it was this past winter. We plan to have a store and hope to have some items to sell by Labor Day bike race weekend. The store will feature the more popular clothing and we have plans to bring in some new items made by local artists. There will be no meal service at this time. It will be a work in progress. As difficult as it was, and we know for some of our guests as well, to change the look of the storied Brant cabin, moving forward we feel this action fits best our vision of the model moving forward considering all the parameters in our thought process.

Later this summer we will be remodeling in the cabins of Lapland, Candy Store, Six Swedes and also both cabooses. The above mentioned cabins we plan to rent for the upcoming winter season, possibly earlier depending on how construction goes. Since we are doing many of these projects “in house” it takes a bit more time but also allows us to make changes on the fly and craft and create as we think best. The above cabins are also on the slate to have a new paint job! Regarding taking reservations and booking these spaces, we will have more information available later this summer once we feel comfortable doing so based on the progress. We are doing much of the work ourselves as we mentioned.

We want to thank everyone again for their love, prayers and steadfast support. The next phase of Maplelag will be very different and change can be hard but we have to do what we feel is best for our interests and inspiration to best serve our guests. We look forward to seeing folks at Maplelag again soon! Enjoy the rest of the summer and we will update next month with hopefully a favorable progress report.