All right well uh welcome to the podcast matt and uh heather oserkoff did i say that right, yep okay i just practiced it so i better get it right so you are your owners of there's a lodge that you have in the seward and then also seward saunas so that sounds uh sounds pretty wild but before we even get there there's some debate about where the happiest place on earth is and you're in disney world right now oh man some people some people
would say that alaska is the happiest place on earth so what's what we're just getting we're getting inspiration from other very high-end places to bring that back to alaska to make alaska even better nice it's it all it all depends on what you're looking for you know happiest place as far as outdoor adventure like you chance can't beat alaska but it is nice to have kind of a a i don't know if corporate's the right word but a manufactured sort
of environment that's made to it to make you feel good so there's nothing wrong with going to Disneyland once in a while yeah seeing how people or workers with hospitality and the way they treat guests and there's a lot to glean from other corporations and how they train their employees and everything and everything we can learn even on a vacation we try to bring back to make our guests experience the happiest place on their vacation yeah we want There's an idea.
And I have friends whose families own lodges. I grew up in Southeast Alaska in Klawaka, Prince of Wales Island, and there's a romantic notion about lodge ownership to where you just get to hang out and you get to meet interesting people and shake hands with people before dinner. It's a wonderful, fun experience. But as lodge owners, is it all that it's cracked up to be? Are there pros and cons? And you're still in the business, so it must be worth sticking with.
So what are some of the best things about owning a lodge? I think in our experience, the number one factor that brings in positive interactions with guests is being on the property full time. And I know there's horror stories when the workers or the owners aren't present and things will kind of haywire, but we just kind of created an experience where our guests come into our family. You're joining us at our dinner table. We're going to break bread together and we're going to share stories.
We're going to sit shoulder to shoulder apart and just enjoy a meal. And I don't know, we haven't had any horror stories. We love what we do, and it's just pretty amazing. Yeah, and I mean, the last few seasons, it's been just the summer season. So it's really kind of a mindset in Alaska where you know that you're going to kind of bust your butt for this season, summer and into the fall. And then there's kind of a break. And so for me personally, I love that we're kind of changing things up.
You know, you have a season with fishing and adventures and hiking and things like that. And then in the wintertime, the pace slows and is a little different. Now you're starting to look at your winter activities. And we are super excited. We are trying to develop the winter tourism in our little towns of Superd. So the goal is to continue that tourism and hosting throughout the winter. But again, you are getting a way different change of pace and different activities.
So and we're all really people, people. We enjoy getting to meet folks from all over. We love visiting. We like hearing their stories. So, so far, we feel like we're on a fantastic trajectory and are really enjoying it. And the lifestyle that we're creating, we just had our first son and we're excited to pull him into all of this. And for us, it's a great fit. So, well, you can ask us in 20 years how it is, but right now we are very content, loving it and excited to grow and expand. Mm-hmm.
So what type of experience would someone get when they go to that lodge? Some lodges are fishing exclusive. Some are more of a hunting. But it seems like you have kind of experience fishing, maybe multifaceted offerings there. Can you talk a little bit about why someone might want to book with there? Yeah, we have worked. My brother and I, we also own a construction company. So that has really allowed us to do remote construction in Alaska.
So we've spent a lot of winters actually working off of Kodiak.
On raspberry island and on fognac and on kodiak island itself uh renovating hunting and fishing lodges and that has really opened a you know a different demographic of folks that come up to do either dog hunting or elk hunting brown bear hunting black tail deer and then we get into the fishing and seward and just we love the outdoors my brother and i and heather and and we do a lot of of those things ourselves and it's like why not create an environment where we can incorporate
the fishing crowd demographic and then incorporate the hunting people that want to do the experience based economy with kayaking and hiking and everything else. And I don't know, we just, I think what brings people to our table is.
The camaraderie of the folks come to our doors and then heather's cooking so i think one thing that sets us apart from other lodges in the area is the home-cooked meals that heather does so you can go out there and bust your butt and be out in the elements and then know that hey we're going to get fresh sourdough bread when we get back to the house and and we get to enjoy fresh cooked meals and everything is from scratch down to the hamburger buns you know so it's pretty nice and
And that's one thing that we picked up from some of these remote lodges that we've worked at is just that the little details go a very long way when you're trying to host folks. And you can have a terrible day out fishing, a terrible day out hunting. But if they come back and like, wow, you know what? We gave it our best shot out there in the wild.
Now we get to come home and we can truly relax and not have to be worried about what's going to be happening for the next eight to 10 hours as we recoup and get ready for the following day. Yeah, the food piece is so huge. If it just seems like it's a bare bones sort of experience, and that is totally fine for some people. They want as little as possible. They want it as cheap as possible.
But if it's a premium type lodge and the food's not good, then it just doesn't really earn that title of premium. I think, looking back, though, to your question of what can people expect, we do offer the snagging season. So that's in the beginning of June. Folks coming to stay with us are coming specifically to catch those salmon, the sockeye salmon. And then moving into the middle of the summer, our lodge is open for B&B guests.
So those guests are coming primarily. They just want a place to stay. They've planned their whole trip and they are excited to just kind of be to themselves. We love to be as involved in their trip as they want us to. But we're also happy just to be stepping back, breed them and let them, you know, do what they planned.
And then we've hosted church groups. So it's a fantastic place for larger groups to come that have something specific planned, an activity, or, you know, for example, with a church group, they want to do some teaching time. So that's definitely very diverse in what we can offer. But across the board, we want to make sure that folks feel like they're family. We want them to know that they're wanted and they're welcome. And the goal is to want them to come back.
You know yeah i had some friends come up from california after college i've been in california for a little bit so i met some friends there and there's a terminal run of coho's on prince of wales island so we'd go up there and we'd go snagging in the salt water and you can snag as long as you're below the the river mouth and they just thought that it was the craziest thing they kept asking are you sure this is legal like we're able to just just lay into
the side of the fish with these with these huge hooks and they loved it they absolutely loved the i maybe maybe the brutality of it whatever it is but just the opportunity you don't have to wait for the fish to to bite it's fun to go out there and you're definitely meat harvesting and sockeye such a quality fish like that's a big draw and it's given these areas it wouldn't be allowed if.
The fishing game thought that it was going to ruin the populations in some areas it's a it's a hatchery return fish, or it's a terminal run. So it's a matter of making sure that the fish can go to people and so that they're not wasted. So some people think that snagging is just a way to destroy the fisheries. Like that's not at all true. They wouldn't allow it if it wasn't a good functional thing that they can allow. And it's super, super fun.
Absolutely. And I think it's really neat because it is not something that's offered in most of the lower 48.
So the style of fishing itself as well as the quality of fish is pretty specific to our area so i think that's one thing that's kind of a neat thing to be proud of you know it's like come hang out and come experience this for yourself you know yeah we call it combat fishing yeah for sure so the the kenai peninsula is world renowned for the king fishing on the kasilof and the kenai rivers, The Kenai River is legendary and legendary for the combat fishing too.
But in recent years with the Kings really kind of falling off and a lot of closures happening, there's been some opportunities in other areas for people like Seward. Like when my wife and I went up there for our honeymoon, we didn't really have any plans to go down to Seward. We're just going to kind of focus on fishing the Kenai and Kasilof in the upper part of the Kenai by Cooper Landing. But heard about the sockeye down in Seward and went down there. And Seward is a great community.
It's a cute little town or whatever, but there's enough there to really make it a good stop. What are some of the things that you like about living in Seward?
We call it where the, mountains kiss the ocean and then sewer just tucked in right in between them but just the environment when you're out there fishing on the flats for the the snagging at least in june you're just right you're on the ocean and this past year we've had whales reach about 400 feet away from us and people don't realize how deep resurrection bay is but when you're standing out there on the flats yeah it's flat for about
100 feet and then it's 900 feet 300 feet away from you It just is a steep decline as the rivers wash out, you know, the silt and everything from the rivers, you have somewhere to stand on. But beyond that, it's open water. And you have the mountains around you, you have the glaciers, you have just, it is just so peaceful. And that's one of the things I love about Seward is you're so close to the water, yet you're so close to the mountains.
And that's the big draw for me, just that environment. And then for folks, all the fjords and everything up close to all the glaciers are to Seward and just a short little boat ride away. And I don't know, what do you love about Seward? Yeah, I would definitely agree. It's a very cute little town. I really enjoy that. Yes, you can totally hop on a boat one day. The next day you can do a glacier tour, exit glaciers just right there.
But I also really enjoy, if I'm being honest, being a woman, the cute little shops. There is amazing artwork from lots of local artists, and it's really neat to get to support them, but also to see what they're up to. I have found that a lot of these artists, their big time to produce their artwork is during the winter. So they work really hard all winter on all of these pieces, and then it gets put out on display for sale in these little shops.
And that's kind of a neat thing. Again, with the culture of Alaska, that's what they do in their time when things are quiet. And so that's one thing that's a neat draw. Also, our cute little restaurants. Zooty's Cafe would be one. La Barna Petite would be another. Just of these small mom and pop restaurants.
Little restaurants that are run by super sweet folks one other thing about seward that i really appreciate is the community and the folks there just are are genuine and it's a wonderful place to live so yeah that winter thing can be really tough to get through so your sense of community can be really tight and full because you're all going through that together so if you don't have a robust winter experience it's going to be brutal so people are pretty energetic and enthusiastic about gathering
together and about being artistic and creative and making it a happy place to live year-round because if you just kind of hold up into your into your house for the whole winter it'd be pretty miserable no one would want to live there so you can have a really strong sense of community yeah and it's a very small population seward is 2600 people so for a busy tourist town seward is very small and it it takes a village and and everyone is participating all summer but But then in the winter,
everyone gets to kind of relax together as a village and kind of hang out. And, yeah, it's just so fun how we got to know so many folks. And you really build a community and you get to exchange guests sometimes for a book. We send them to our friends. You know, we're not hoarding tourists or whatever. And we're sharing and people call us. Like, hey, we were referred by this and so and so. And so it's just really cool to see folks being open to, you know, just helping one another out.
So the new venture, the saunas, tell me a little bit about the saunas here. It's such a logical thing. It's cold during the winter. So to be warm makes a total, a lot of sense at our child, my childhood house over in Kluwak. The builder had built a sauna like underneath the stairs.
So it was kind of a weird spot but it was pretty functional and made the most of that space there so i grew up with a sauna didn't use it a whole lot but used it enough to make it pretty awesome but tell me a little bit about your sauna setup yeah heather had this brilliant idea she came to us uh last winter and she's like hey we have this 20 foot flatbed trailer and your dad's been asking for a sauna let's build a sauna on it and
so we like tim and i and the three of us we sat down and we're like, okay, well, does this make sense? And it's our work trailer. We use it for materials and for transporting stuff for our, you know, sewer is two and a half hours away from your nearest Home Depot or lumber supplier. So it's a very...
Trailers used a lot and and so then we started doing research and we're like okay well let's maybe expand on this and we found a very cool tiny home platform trailers built out of oregon, and we decided to go with that and started sourcing materials and like all right let's not build one let's build three and have people have a different i guess choices and what they want to rent and what they want to book and we kind of started building that from there and it just kind of kept on growing.
Yeah, I think the biggest piece still, we definitely want to credit Tim, that's brother, just has a genius way to envision things. So he custom designed each of these saunas and it's fun because as a team, we can make this thing happen. He definitely designed, thought up and we dreamed it all together. And then Matt is just right there to make it happen. And then I get to jump in and I feel like get to be the enthusiasm about just chatting with guests about what we get to offer.
But one thing that's really neat with these saunas is we feel like it's kind of a circle in that when guests come to stay with us at Oz Lodge, we're excited to promote just a lifestyle of wellness. You know, they're here to do all these fun adventures and just feel so good when you've summoned something or when you've gone on this exit glacier hike or ice climb. Like an epic Billy or, or whatever. Yeah. And then when you come back home, I mean, you're exhausted.
You just climbed this insane mountain and with the sauna, your muscles relax and then you sleep amazingly. So it just really is this neat circle. That encloses the package, I would say. And we love it ourselves. And it's something that we definitely really believe in. So it's easy to be like, man, I would love for you to try this so that you can experience what we're experiencing as well. And what's unique about them is they're on a trailer.
So that means they can get delivered to pretty much anywhere a truck can get through. That makes it very unique for that aspect.
And they have big windows for big alaska views and so those two things when people come in they're like holy moly i didn't realize that we get such a big view and a lot of saunas don't really have that and we went to a lot of overseas websites and to see how the pros built saunas you know like in switzerland or in the alps or uh sinland and so we took those luxury saunas and like how to be now down down scale this and put it on a trailer platform so our guests can experience alaska
through a luxury built sauna so it seems like the construction part's awesome the offering is awesome there's got to be some some paperwork some liability type stuff like is it was it difficult to i don't know whatever sort of paperwork illegality type stuff you have to get through it in order to make this happen or was it was it okay that's your department yeah Yeah, so that's where I jumped in.
I reached out to an insurance company, and it actually did take for a while to be able to find us a company that would carry our policy. And so it definitely is a very unique, specific niche, you know, kind of activity. But yeah, once we got everything squared away, it was great because it's very just straightforward on the coverage and just what's expected of our guests.
Another thing that is kind of unique one we want people to be safe but in promoting well wellness with the insurance policies and stuff we don't allow alcohol drugs or marijuana use with the saunas and so it's a great way to just remind people like hey you can have a lot of fun with healthy substances and we're excited to share that but yeah you definitely have to have your ducks in a row with insurance and your paperwork and that's where i do my best to jump in and you know
the guys are working really hard physically to get these saunas designed built and then delivered and so that's where i get to help contribute the insurance lady was like you have a wood-burning fireplace on a trailer that you're delivering like.
Give me a couple weeks here i i i need a but yeah that was a very unique thing where they're like huh okay yeah this is this is this is definitely in a category of its own and you need to figure out where to place you guys yeah but it's great to interact with folks too and just build relationship there as well yeah that's the problem with i think a lot of people have really good ideas they're super motivated and then as they start to take steps toward realizing
those things it just becomes so cumbersome to deal with the bureaucracy or to deal with the permitting or dealing with all that other stuff and the extra added expense on everything. And it's cool to see people persevere through that and then be able to offer really unique, awesome things to make experiences better.
It's pretty neat yeah and we definitely want to do things uprightly so we we appreciate taking the time to you know research okay what do we need to do and if we're going to park something somewhere specific do we need a permit and how do we you know how do we go about that so and most folks the fact that we're so like okay hey we have this idea we want to do this and we want to do this legally that really eases the pressure off of some of these agencies we're talking
to either for insurance or the forestry department for land use permits and say, Hey, we have this idea. We want to promote wellness and we want to bring tourism to an area of Alaska that is deserving of it. And an experience where in Seward, I don't know if when you were there, there's, there's sometimes some weather days that can happen. And quite frequently, a lot of charters or ocean excursions are canceled or, or, you know, delayed or something. And it's like, what a cool opportunity.
The worse the weather, the better the sauna. Yeah, exactly. Perfect. And that's the thing is people travel and they plan ahead so far in advance for an amazing trip in Alaska. And it's cool to be able to, you know, if there's disappointment in one area, just to be able to scoop folks up and be like, hey, we still have something amazing to offer and it's totally okay that the weather is a bit dumpy right now. Right. Yeah.
So I'm curious as a high school English teacher, I'm always curious about where entrepreneurs get their start. So if you're, if you're pretending you're a senior in high school, go back to when you were a senior in high school, would your high school English teacher say, yeah, I could totally see one day you two doing what you're doing now?
Oh man i'm terrible at spelling so my teacher would be a body but yeah you know i think it comes with maturity my 18 year old self would have never thought to be an entrepreneur and to be somebody stepping outside of a comfort zone and to do something very risky and that was one thing that especially the seward saunas is one thing that we've heard a lot from folks is this is very risky and you guys aren't going to make it and that was a really tough thing here and it's like oh man like
we're pouring our hearts as we're building the first sauna and we're you know we're not sparing any expense and we want to make this thing as amazing as possible and to hear you're not going to make it and it's like oh man that's a really disappointing thing and i kind of had a little maybe a breakdown i guess and like oh is this really are we doing the right thing heather and Tim, is this the right idea?
And we pushed through it, we persevered and it was just really cool to see people's, first of all, locals reaction to it once it was completed and people were able to use the sauna and then the tourists reaction to it with folks coming in either from out of state or maybe international guests that have stayed with us and have loved it. So just a really reassuring thing. Like, okay, we made it through season one
and that was a blast. It was very stressful and not saying that any new business is a piece of cake. There's definitely a lot of effort that goes into it and a lot of days where you're not making any money. But in the end, I think it's starting to... Come to fruition. I think too, the numbers also speak and the number I'm referring to is the amount of Google reviews we were able to collect the first year. We're over a hundred from April of 2024.
So it really is neat to see the hard work and the risks come to fruition and be like, oh man, this is working. It's exciting. I think also too, it's really neat when you are a business owner, the sensitivity towards other business owners and small little companies amongst families, you really have a sensitivity towards, oh, I want to promote you and I want to support you. So I think it's a fantastic growing experience as well. Do you have any business background, go to school for business?
Because even I have some former students who went for business and then got an AA in business and marketing, and it's already almost obsolete because things are changing so fast. If you don't have a grip on, like you said, Google reviews or Yelp or whatever it is that will help your business, a lot of that stuff, the colleges aren't even... They're still trying to catch up. You have to learn so much more on the fly. What's your business background or is this just all grit and entrepreneurship?
Grit and entrepreneurship. I have a degree in child psychology and here I am starting a sauna business. I think... Yeah, just, you know, the social media world has just completely exploded with a promotion and advertisement through either like TikTok is a big one where I don't even understand TikTok. Tim is very good. My brother is very good at the social media marketing and Instagram is massive for your younger demographic. And Facebook is very good for a little bit of an older demographic.
And you have like LinkedIn, which is very good for an adult demographic. So it's very interesting how different platforms.
Age group are affiliated with them and how each of those require a different type of marketing strategy to attract those guests or those potential guests that you can stay either with us with the saunas or with the lodging yeah and i think a big part his brother tim you know is very good at recognizing you take a look at who's succeeding and what they're doing and just emulate it.
So, and then, yeah, we just want to do things uprightly and be able to welcome our guests as best we can and give them an awesome experience. So what would you attribute your growth in being idea people? Like when you were kids, were you just thinking about stuff and ideas and problem solvers? Sometimes you're, once you get out of high school, you start to just think about the way things are and read about things or listen to podcasts.
Like what was it that really help you become idea people and look for these opportunities? Well, I can see Matt is an amazing problem solver. So if something's broken around the property, I feel bad because I don't get worked up. He might be panicking and I'm like, you know, baby, just calm down because I know he's going to be able to fix it. So I don't even fret.
But I was a dreamer as a kid And that's one of the biggest gifts I think my mom gave to me was the ability to dream freely and to she would support it. So I'd come up with something crazy, an idea, and she'd be like, well, how are we going to get you there? You know, and she never shot me down. And I think that that's such a gift because half of those dreams I pursued. And I just figure the dumb ones will fall away on their own,
but the good ones will stick. And man, when you're looking back on life, you're so glad that you took advantage of it. So that's one thing that we hope to give to our son, Jed, you know, what are you dreaming about? And let's just think about it. What, what would it take to get there? You know? And I don't know. I just feel like, like you said, the dumb ones will fall away on their own and the good ones will stick. And that's a great quote. Cool. We just coined it.
But yeah, I don't know. Were you a dreamer as a kid? I was. And what I think my gift is Heather dreams or Tim dreams. And I'm right there to be like, all right, well, here's a dream. Now, you know, tired to the pavement. Let's get working. I'll swing hammers. I'll do whatever and make it happen. And I'll come alongside you and encourage you in this. And if something is going wrong, like Heather said, I'm very good at problem
solving. I might not realize it at the time, but Scratchman had enough at it. And like, okay, well, your fingers are connected to your wrist, connected to your elbow, connected to your head. And all of it works together. And the same thing is in any circumstance or either a mechanical failure or a problematic something on a software issue. You just don't give up. I think that's the biggest thing is if you're starting a business or if you're in the middle of some headache, don't give up.
And parents like encourage your kiddos, like let them try it. You don't want to shoot down something that you might think is like, well, that is not a smart thing. Could be the next million dollar idea. And it's just so fun to see small businesses succeed and like, oh man, I wish I would have thought of that. But I'm sure that person might've had somebody saying like, oh, that's never going to work.
Don't pursue it. So that's my biggest encouragement to folks with small businesses and kids that have or adults or anybody that has an idea, like try it. What's the worst that can happen? Somebody might say, no, that's not going to work and it might succeed or it doesn't. And then what you've learned, you've always have learned something, even in a failure. You can turn that around and the next idea will succeed. A friend of mine says that if you don't try it, you're saying no for everybody
else. Or if you apply something or, you know, it's, it, and that makes a whole lot of sense. There's such a difficult thing to kind of measure and manage when you, especially a lot of kids ask me about dreams and whatnot.
And what were your dreams? And it's the idea of having no plan B can be super dangerous, but also if you don't have a plan B, that's also dangerous because it's your, if you have a plan B, you're going to start looking at that plan B. It might be much more attractive because you don't have to work as hard and it's easier not having a plan b if this dream isn't something that's going to work out or you're looking at the skills or whatever the circumstances are you
don't have a plan b and you keep pursuing this like, whatever happens there are these i think i've seen a couple different ways that the you see the memes or or the videos on on social media that have someone digging for gold and someone gives up right before they get to the gold yeah i've seen that one yeah i saw one yesterday that It was two people digging and one person was walking away and the other person was kept digging and it was the pit of an outhouse.
So, and the phrase was like something to the effect of, you know, sometimes you do need to give up or know when to give up. And I thought, well, that's, that's also kind of a good point with those bad ideas. It's like, yeah, you want to keep going, but you're not going to hit the pay dirt that you want. So it's such an individualized, difficult thing to manage. And I think seeing things to the end is important. So you gave it the all rather than cheated the experience.
So that's, that's pretty, but yeah, it's such a personal thing. Who knows how it works out. Absolutely. Yeah. So going forward, what are you, are you already working on the next idea or are you kind of settling with the lodge and the saunas and see how that turns out? Oh man, we have, we have our five, 10, 15, and we're always dreaming. We're always, we call it. So I was thinking moments when the three of us are sitting down and like,
so I was thinking and you rattle off an idea and say, wow. Okay. We have a lot on our plate right now, but let's maybe put that on the simmer and see how that develops. And we've already have ideas for a fourth sauna. And as we keep on developing, one of the things that I want to pursue once I get a little bit more established is getting my captain's license and doing some boat excursions in Seward. Or one of the things is maybe opening up something in Hawaii.
That's something that Heather and I have been talking about where she really loves the warmth and we enjoy family time. And, you know, Tim really loves the winter and the winter sports, I think, a little bit more than we do. And like, well, if you run the lodge in the winter, we can go run a little branch in Hawaii and do stuff there.
And Tim really also wants to pursue to get his aviation and get his flight license and to be a pilot and to tackle tourist stuff in the air and glacier landings and all that kind of sort of fun stuff.
So as we continue to grow we we do have some fun things that we we want to tackle kind of maybe more selfishly that we want to do but then also incorporate that into a way to continue to grow our lodge and our little little business and our little retirement plan yeah awesome if someone wanted sorry go ahead oh no go for it if uh someone wanted to book like do you have different packages. What do you got for people who wanted to book? We do. So there's a couple of
different ways they can go about it. They can call us directly. And again, we can book the package during the sockeye salmon run. That's the beginning of June. So the first two weeks. And that package includes lodging in the communal bunkhouse. And they get all of the fishing gear that they would need. We vacuum package all the fish that they catch.
And then we'll package it so that they can take it on the airplane. and then we do offer complimentary breakfast with that and then we we love food like we said so we are constantly just inviting folks over hey let's you want to like pool our resources and have dinner together and let's cook some of the fish that you caught and just have fun with it you know so and that people can participate in if they'd like they don't have to they can go into town and
eat at a restaurant but so that's one package that's available in June and then July as I mentioned there's a lot of folks that just like to book lodging only they can do that through B&B or Vrbo or just call directly and then we have done silver salmon season in September I think we're going to kind of dwindle off and try to kind of turn our resources towards hosting folks that want to come hunt. So we can do packages with that.
We do have kayaks available. So if folks want to take a kayak, they can. But we're kind of happy to jump in as much as a guest would like us to. And especially with the saunas now available, some folks really appreciate using that at the lodge. And then others want more of a remote experience and we'll take it out for them somewhere. As far as fish packaging goes, do you have vacuum packers there? You do the cutting yourself if you're a guest and vacuum packing and freezer space and all that?
So pretty much what we do i spent a season commercial fishing so i've developed a very unique skill of filleting fish he loves it i can't figure out why he loves it so if you're good at it then you probably love it yeah so you know our guests they catch fish we go out fishing we come back and sometimes we offer them hey if you want to come to the play station by all means come on hang out if you want to try to play your own fish by all means we'll give you a knife you can do that,
or stay relaxed, go do whatever, kind of decompress from a day of fishing. And I take the fish to town. I fillet everything. I come back. We vacuum pack it. And then we have fish boxes and we have freezers, storage area. And so we, I mean, the whole thing, it's all covered when they stay with us. And so they get to have a worry-free catch. And then they know that's going to be vacuum packed and packed. And they'll be able to take a 50-pound fish box home that's airline approved.
And so it's you know we have the gear the fishing poles the line the hooks everything like you just feel like hey we have waiters just bring a raincoat a few layers and your toothbrush and we have everything else so that's kind of our thing is to offer a. Full package to where it's a worry-free state. And we just want you to come and enjoy your experience in Alaska.
And as Heather was saying, kind of in the fall time, now we're wanting to promote more of the hunting that's available in Seward and that demographic. And then some of the adventure tourists that want to come experience like the running, the piping, the mountaineering, ice climbing. There's just so much unique experiences that individuals can have in Seward.
And we're just trying to invite all those people to our place and and promote all that yeah absolutely go ahead oh one thing is people reach out and they ask specifically about the package for example during soft dry season like for example it's 385 a night per person to book and you know that can kind of be like wow that seems like a lot but as you shop around seward It's really interesting because lodging and the tours,
if you're going to do a deep sea fishing tour, one night in a lodge and one deep sea fishing tour, you're easily at $700 to $800. So that's one thing we've tried to do. We're not the Ritz, but we definitely have a very cute, clean place to stay and we love to share it. And when we do big groups like this, we're able to keep it more affordable. What about transportation from the airport in Anchorage? Yeah. So that is one thing we recommend. We would love to be picking guests up.
And eventually if Tim does go forward with getting his pilot's license, it'd be super fun to have him pick them up that way. But as of right now, it's just the three of us running every day. So we don't have the manpower to do that. But we do offer just recommendations for grabbing a rental car at the airport.
Guests can take the bus or they can also take the train which we actually haven't even been able to do it because we're always just super busy but everyone has loved it that has taken the train yeah and then we pick them up locally so anything that involves getting around town we take our guests and we take them around either after fishing we're going to go hiking we're going to go into town or we're going to go to the weir where the fish come up and where they get counted and all
that we will we'll go with them if they want us to they typically have rental cars so they're using therapy to get around but we're happy to show them you know where they want to go and that sort of thing so yeah that was my question i thought a super unique elastin experience to fly to anchorage get on the train take the train down to seward and then have your fishing wild glacier hiking all that sort of stuff and then train back that'd be a that'd be pretty sweet
it's really neat and like we said we had friends that have worked on the train so they have had that experience of being on that end but also the guests who have taken us up on hey you should really try this they all are just that was amazing i'm so glad we did that you know so we're like oh thank god because we haven't even done it yet perfect awesome so uh where can people follow you how can people book give us give us all that information.
Awesome. So you can take a peek at a lot of our stuff. Instagram is super fun because you get quick snapshots, of course, of everything we're doing. That's going to be Adventures of Oz underscore Oz Lodge. And then for the saunas, it's Seward underscore mobile underscore saunas or our websites, SewardSaunas.com or OzLodge.com. And again, I handle the bookings directly. So I'd love to visit with anyone that's interested in making reservation and that can phone, text, call, whatever works best.
We do offer the Airbnb and Vrbo platforms as well if folks feel more comfortable going through a platform that they use frequently. So lots of options. Are you the type of lodge who's already booked three or four or five years out? Do people have to really plan in advance or do you have a couple openings? We definitely have some openings. We're not quite that big, but we certainly hope we become that well-known.
And we do already have lots of returning guests. So that's really fun and very encouraging. Last year, we did book out solid about four months prior. So that's kind of the window of time that I'd say if you're super interested in coming, I would say six months is very wise to do. Yeah. At Thanksgiving, talk to your family and friends and say hey we got to go up to seward alaska there are these a fun family up there and let's go plan our adventure fish trains and glaciers perfect.
Yes the uh logs that we've patterned ourselves after that the guys have worked on they are the type that are booked out a couple years in advance so we're hoping if we continue to implement some of the things that they have done that will be right there as soon as we get a little bit well.
Awesome well thanks again for being on here really appreciate it any closing thoughts, we just really appreciate you inviting us to do that and if you're in seward please reach out to us we'd love to treat your family to a sauna and if you need somewhere to stay just let us know and i'd say be nice to folks you meet out in the wild or anywhere because you don't know what opportunities might come of it that's that's absolutely for sure no thanks again awesome nice to meet you you too.