New owners at Tippecanoe

WILLOW -- As a child growing up in Willow, Alice Miller enjoyed living on a lake, and always loved the water. At the same time, across the country in Pennsylvania, her future husband, John, was spending much of his time on the local rivers.

This past April, the young couple bought Tippecanoe, an established canoe and kayak rental business that operates in the Nancy Lake State Recreation Area. Their individual love for the water and their joint desire to live an active outdoor life is being realized in a big way. Both the Millers said they have learned a lot over the past few months.

"It's definitely been a learning experience, a real eye-opener," Alice said.

With 50 canoes and four kayaks to take care of, they are also learning the meaning of hard work.

On quieter days, when Alice is sitting out on the deck of the building, knitting, she said someone inevitably comes up and teases her.

"They say things like, 'Boy, you sure do have a great job!' and I have to laugh. I just smile and say, 'Today I do,' and I leave it at that," she said. "Most folks assume that we work for the park, and don't realize that we own this place. And few people realize all the work that goes into running this type of a business."

"It looks pretty laid-back," her husband, John, said, "but there really is a lot of work behind it."

Currently, John Miller is in the Air Force, and works at Elmendorf Air Force Base, but he plans to leave when his enlistment is up in late 2005. For now, he does what he can to help out by working on weekends, but Alice is the primary operator of the business.

"Intellectually, we understood it was going to be a lot of hard work," Alice said, "but the romance of it -- the idea of this wonderful little business on the lake -- that was something we also were caught up in. I think we are just starting to find our balance, starting to feel like we have a handle on things."

Tippecanoe operates in the park through a noncompetitive-use permit, which gives them permission to rent non-motorized craft within the Nancy Lake and Willow Creek recreation areas.

"We spend a lot of our time now helping other people have fun," Alice said.

Tippecanoe has canoes stationed at seven locations within the recreation area, eliminating the hassle of transporting canoes between the sites. The business has canoes at its headquarters on South Rolly Lake, at Nancy Lake, Tanaina Lake, Red Shirt Lake, Rhein Lake and at North Rolly Lake.

Canoe-rental rates range in price from $20 for an eight-hour rental complete with paddles and vests, to $78 for a four- to seven-day trip with paddles, vests and portage devices, which they require for all canoe trail trips.

The Millers encourage anyone interested in renting canoes to make a reservation to be sure a canoe will be available when they arrive. They have been so busy on some weekends that they have rented out all of their canoes in any one location by 11 a.m.

"Memorial Day weekend, we had only one boat left. And that's because her brother had it," John said.

One of the reasons the business appealed to the Millers is the flexibility it offers. The Millers are expecting their first child in January, and they said they can think of no better way -- or place -- to raise their child than in Willow. "It's a great place to be a kid, and this business will allow me more flexibility to be with our child than an ordinary job," Alice said.

While the couple is currently living in Wasilla, Alice said they have been successfully running the business with a little help from Matanuska Telephone Association.

"They have this wonderful little feature called simultaneous ring," Alice said. "We put a phone line at my parents' home on Long Lake, then turned off the ringer. When it rings to that line, it also rings to my cell phone, so I can talk to customers from wherever I am. We are still working out the bugs of running this business in a location where there is no electricity or phone service, but we are getting there."

"It's nice that it's so rustic," Alice said. "We'd like to keep it as much like this as possible. But we'd also like to be able to accept credit cards, and do a few other things that would bring the business into the 21st century. It would help us with logistics, and with creating a better deposit system and cancellation policy, if we could accept credit cards."

""It's the age of the magnetic strip," John said.

While they continue to do a steady business at all seven locations within the park, John said the busiest spots vary throughout the summer.

"It depends on the time of year and the crowd that's here," he said. "Right now, the canoe trail is very popular. When the pike fishing is hot, then Red Shirt Lake is hot."

Alice said she likes to be able to point people in the right direction for what they are looking for. Having grown up in the area, she is pretty familiar with the different lakes and what they have to offer.

"I have some good general information, but I don't get out there much," Alice said. "My brother goes out and tells me what he finds. He might say, 'Fishing was good here, but not over there,' or 'This campsite was good, but that one was overgrown.' And I always like to ask people about their trip when they return their gear, so I can pass the information along to others heading out. I like to send people off with the confidence that what they are looking for is out there."

The couple hopes to eventually expand the business, and they already have lots of ideas they are tossing around. Ideas that range from the basic growth of the company, like adding more kayaks and putting them in more locations, to broader ideas for expansion into river-running on the Little Su and Willow Creek.

They are also considering options for possible winter use of the business, such as cross-country-ski rentals or snowmachine tours.

"Before we could do anything like that," Alice said, "we would need to do a lot of surveying of our customers, and we would need to work with [the Alaska Division of] Parks to see what would be acceptable. Right now we have our hands full just keeping up with what's already established. Our biggest problem is staffing, with John still in the Air Force. Maybe next year or the year after, we can start thinking seriously about those things."