Day 83: Lemons to Lemonade (National Lemonade Day)

One of the most challenging things about life, and indeed business, are the unexpected twists and turns. From the slight annoyances to the devastatingly insurmountable, the wise among us have learned to take a creative twist to the lemons of life, knowing that a challenging situation may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. So, on this National Lemonade Day, when life has handed the good folks of The Baldpate Inn lemons, we honor their spirit and unwavering determination to make the best of it, get creative with those lemons, and turn them into something delicious like lemon blueberry muffins, lemon ginger muffins, or pink lemonade pie!!  

One of the biggest unexpected challenges that has been faced by The Baldpate Inn was the extreme flood of 2013. The reality of the damage to the property and loss of business, by being forced to close six weeks early, was a heavy and imposing challenge to overcome. The shift towards the positive began with gratitude, recognizing that everyone was safely evacuated. Through much hard work, persistence, and the healing balm of time, we are now able to see blessings that have come from this event. The generosity and kindness of family, friends, and even people we didn’t know, all reaching out to help demonstrated the very best in humanity. Perseverance paid off in the major improvements on the road, and indeed, we can now laugh at the cleaned out basement.

We are learning to see the bright possibility in every trying situation. As previously mentioned, even disappointing social media reviews turn into opportunities to improve, and better delight our customers. A new food trend can present an initial challenge that can result in a bouquet of new recipes and favorites! More to come on this soon!

Even this blog, as rewarding as it has been, has come with its own set of challenges. 100 blogs in 100 days is a lot of blogs, and not a lot of time, let me tell you. But the difficulties have been far outshined by the relationships and connections that continue to strengthen. The history of the Baldpate Inn has taken on new life, and been shared with so many curious folks. And, as an unexpected bonus, our archives are now much more organized! 

As we are certain that life will continue to present the unexpected, we stand assured that the family and friends of The Baldpate Inn will continue to look on the bright side, find the silver lining, and enjoy those lemony treats at The Baldpate Inn.

Written by Liz Rodgers

Baldpate Flood video at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-wYPYq_poQ

Day 72: Fire & Flood

Baldpate has been blessed so many times. You have already learned about our Flood Disaster in 2013, but did you know it wasn’t the first time a flood threatened our area?

According to this Estes Park Trail news story, back in 1951 Lily Lake flooded. Although destroying Highway 7 just at our entrance, it thankfully passed by Baldpate’s buildings without damages.

No doubt the Fire Tower on Twin Sisters Mountain built in 1914 served its safety duty over many years, spotting wildland fires before they became a danger. While no longer there, we appreciate having Rocky Mountain National Park as a monitoring neighbor today.

In Baldpate’s history, we know of two fires which could have been significant but were not. During the 1980s update of the Main Lodge, there was a small fire in the Library, which was evidenced by burned out flooring that we found when redoing shelving in the library.

With wildfires in our area during 2012, Baldpate had been on evacuation alert. During the fall of 2014, just a year after our big flood, we experienced for ourselves the trauma of an unexpected fire. Thankfully our emergency experiences had taught us the value of prayer and calm in the face of emergency.

Just at our night shift change, our very observant hotel manager, Andy, noted a lot unexplained smoke in our Sun Porch Dining Room. Investigation brought us to our basement, with the awful realization that the entire crawlspace was filled with smoke so dense you couldn’t even begin to see. There must be fire somewhere!  

The 911 call was made and our staff sprang into action, waking our guests quickly and getting them safely out of the building (thankfully a cool but not freezing fall evening).

Mackenzie happened to be working in Estes Park at Scots Fest so he was the second phone call and arrived sooner than he should have, to turn off our propane and begin the search for the source of the smoke.  

Our Allenspark Fire Dept arrived shortly, along with Estes Park Emergency Medical Team and Larimer County Sheriff support. These teams spent hours searching to finally discover the illusive smoldering embers under a water boiler. They were thoughtful and caring toward each of our displaced guests and staff. 

To this day our most heartfelt thanks goes to these men and women who serve with such compassion and professionalism, all hours day or night!

Appreciative recognition must also go to our special B&B guests that night who patiently adapted to our emergency situation with extreme graciousness. “Adventures to add to our diaries,” they positively responded! 

While hard to imagine that night, or even in the months to follow of vast paperwork details of getting insurance help, the long term blessing is that today, the water boiler is replaced and the flooring upgraded to concrete. All this makes us safer than ever before.

Written by Lois Smith

Day 35: September 2013 Flood Baldpate

It is hard to know where to begin in talking about our September Federal Flood Disaster # 13768 in the fall of 2013. The entire experience certainly provided me much more compassion any time the news features stories of flood victims.

What began as just an extra rainy week, unexpectedly and quickly turned into an emergency situation. As the pouring rains did not stop and water rolled down our mountainside, torrential rivers cut through our driveway, tore down trees and tried to launch our propane tank down a newly-created ravine.  Our kitchen and basement were flooded. It was necessary to evacuate our guests from the hotel and close six weeks before the anticipated end of our season.

Our Youtube Baldpate Flood video does a pretty good job of narrating the timeline of events with photos and videos shot during the actual disaster, and our year later Summer Enchanted Evenings presentation, Reflections on Baldpate’s 2013 September Flood Disaster, shares much of our first year recovery story.

The experience from a financial recovery point of view was definitely one of long disappointing days completing detailed forms and paperwork, just to be turned down by my insurance company (even those I had “loss of business” coverage), FEMA (not covered since a business entity), SBA loans (even with 25+ years in business, not deemed a viable risk since I did not have adequate payback funds in reserve).  I wanted to scream, if I had the money, I wouldn’t be asking for the loan!  I did indeed use every personal reserve before I asked for help even to the point of taking social security benefits years before I wanted to, but at the time every dollar was critical to get back on track.

It was my family that asked me to set aside my do-it-myself pride to request donations from my loyal customers and to apply for grant money as it became available. Family and friends stepped in to help in so many ways, be it literally mucking out the basements, or freely loaning heavy equipment to create a primitive road, or stopping by to just chat and help me stack sandbags, or with months of daily prayers that I know held me together.

Help did eventually work its way through the system, my banks extended a grace period on some of my loans, some of my suppliers extended terms (a huge shout out to FSA, then Yancey, who did not even charge interest during the time I could not pay).  In an absolute answer to prayer, Baldpate received grants from United Way and Recover Colorado.

In somewhat strange emotional ways, recovery was not a quick process either.  Instead of my previous rainy day feelings, “settle in with a warm cup of soup,” I found myself strangely tense if it rained for more than a few hours. As well, one experiences a shift in piously thinking that you are safe way up at 9,000 feet since floods could only rise up from below, but now understood they can just as easily come down from above. There were clear feelings of guilt to process when you saw that others were facing sincere devastation much worse than your own. 

There were moments of when all you could do was laugh at silly things. The first days, although we had safe water at Baldpate, we did not have sewer so we were in the “no flush” zone.  Thankfully my home in town had not been damaged, so we shuttled there to shower. Amazing to me was that each of the 13 staff members, each day, required a new clean towel. The piles of laundry when they finally all left took me weeks to complete!  There were plenty of fun stories!  There was the parking ticket I received when I left my car at the top of the impassable driveway for blocking the road!  And if you made it through the Reflections story, the bear story is in retrospect hysterical!

Now with several years of time as perspective, with each rainbow I see even more of the blessings from that frightening experience. From the 900 tons of rock that the county used to repair and upgrade our road, to the honesty factor I had to face with the strained financial state of my small business and emergency reserves, an immense amount of good has been realized.  I have been truly Too Blessed to Be Stressed.  All this AND a very clean Baldpate basement!

Written by Lois Smith

Baldpate Flood video at 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-wYPYq_poQ