New owners put Sheep Creek Lodge back

on map

April 29, 2007

By John R. Moses

Frontiersman

CASWELL - Phenie Miller seems like she'd be right at home behind the grill in the Sheep Creek Lodge's refurbished kitchen, but as the breakfast rush wound down

Friday morning, she happily watched as her new cook prepared for the lunch rush. That's the way she likes it.

Everything on the menu except husband Fred's Alaskanized gumbo recipe is her creation, but she doesn't usually cook any of it. Not unless bad things happen, like when the morning cook broke his arm last week. That put her under the gun in the commercial kitchen. There were no complaints from diners.

&#8220Tell her if she's cooking I'll be back all the time,” a patron praising Phenie's egg dish told a server.

&#8220I thought, ‘Oh no. Don't do that.'” The eggs she cooked came out at the desired level of doneness, even if- she admitted - she does &#8220cheat” and use a spatula. Her teenage son, Micah, takes pride in flipping the eggs in the air and catching them in the lodge's egg pans.

Cook shortage solved, Phenie is back planning the summer menu, a Cinco de Mayo gift shop sale, a future bocce ball court and expansion of facilities at the lodge's neighboring RV park fronting Sheep Creek. The first wedding was booked for July 7 - for a lodge bartender.

Getting past the past

Other than eggs, things aren't so up in the air anymore for the lodge, and that's a good change. May 22 will mark one year for the new owners of a fabled establishment inside a unique log building with a checkered past. The lodge was once a regular tour bus stop, but deteriorated in recent years and lost its corporate and family clientele.

The establishment, the Millers admit, has seen hard times under previous owners.

Fred and Phenie didn't just buy a lodge, they bought a potential liability and a kitchen that was a firetrap. Arcing wires over a greasy puddle greeted the Anchorage couple the day they took over last March.

Back then the lodge had been a different kind of business. Things were rowdy. Real rowdy.

Moldering taxidermy, including a stuffed baby owl, looked impassively down at goings-on in the dying business from dusty walls and nicotine-clad log rafters. Fur and feathers on those critters showed signs of the dirt and tobacco smoke damage that eventually doomed many of them to a trash bin.

A hand-lettered sign near the front door back then advised patrons to leave their guns with the bartender. That was not a joke, but may as well have been: There's still a dent in the bar from the place where someone making a point of some kind slammed a gun down during those wilder, yet recent, days.

Back to takeover day: The retired banking industry executives surveyed the disaster area - sparks, grease and all - and saw bright possibilities that would only bring results after a lot of hard work.

Then they started turning the well-crafted but run-down log structure back into a hub for the rural community around it and a source of jobs even during the slower winter season.

The upstairs gift shop was turned into an apartment. The whole family plans to move into the lodge full-time in June after Micah finishes the year at an Anchorage high school.

How did they get here?

The dream started on a bright July afternoon. The couple sat on their deck in Anchorage talking about the future and looking through an Alaska real estate magazine. A small bed and breakfast, they thought, maybe after retirement. Some day.

Both had worked for Alaska USA Federal Credit Union, Phenie in charge of branches and Fred in charge of building what Phenie said became the largest trust division in the state. They both enjoy entertaining, sharing fine wines and all the basics of the hospitality industry. They also had both reached points in their careers where they were wondering what came next.

They decided that the &#8220next step” should come sooner rather than later.

&#8220When you're doing a job you can do in your sleep then there's no challenge,” Phenie said Friday as she picked her way around puddles and over rocky soil to show off one of nine immaculate guest cabins readied for visitors. &#8220I think Fred and I both wanted a new challenge.”

It was time to set a new course. That new course turned out to be running a lodge with cabins, downstairs rooms, a gift shop and gas pumps. She'd had her eye on the place once before and didn't like the deterioration she saw when it came back on the

market.

&#8220It hadn't been shown the respect it needed to be shown,” Phenie said of the 18-year-old lodge.

The building was started in 1986 as a replacement for the old lodge, which had burned down. Finished in 1989 by Nenana Logweavers, it was dubbed the Log Mahal. The wood is Alaska white spruce harvested in Nenana from standing beetle kill. The logs, between 80 and 300 years old, still bear the bore holes that doomed the trees. Wood for the Swedish-scribed structure was worked entirely on site.

The first things the couple did was to shut down food service, gut the kitchen and restrooms, and break out the Murphy's Oil Soap for eight rounds of scrubbing each of the logs inside the intricate structure.

Food service was out of the question.

&#8220I said, ‘We wouldn't eat here, nobody else is eating here,'” Fred said.

They never shut the doors, but they also couldn't serve alcohol - not that much of it was left behind the bar at that point anyway.

Someone had been cited for serving alcohol to a minor before they bought the place, so on the first day of their ownership, the state pulled the liquor license.

That was just one of many surprises.

They kept the doors open so people could wander in and see them at work remodeling the place.

Early on, they decided to make the facility non-smoking, especially after all that scrubbing to remove decades of smoke from the walls.

They also set closing time at 11 p.m. most nights, midnight Fridays and Saturdays. Those hours got earlier during the winter weeks.

&#8220Nothing good ever happens after midnight,” Fred once said, describing how his new policies discouraged the crowd that just wants to sit around drinking and smoking.

The lodge saw some upgrades. Wireless Internet was connected. The rooms now have television hookups. The gas pumps were restored. The front of the building, and the bar, were finished with rounded stone. Tasteful cranberry paint now accents the bar's original mirror.

Then the couple did something few expected in an area where things close down in the winter: They started wine-tasting nights, successfully serving food and wine at special events through early spring. They will resume those in the fall.

The lunch and dinner menu didn't shrink, and loyal customers stopped in regardless of the weather. State troopers stopped by for food.

Phenie's creations range from hearty burgers to seared ahi, rosemary and pepper crusted pork tenderloins to pot roast.

Fred's contribution is a gumbo so popular it was brought back after Mardi Gras. It features reindeer sausage instead of traditional andouille and some other Alaska substitutions.

The wine list is diverse, and the well behind the bar is stocked with brand names.

In the front of the restaurant is a coffee bar where people stop in to read the paper.

More and more families and groups of women are coming in for lunch or dinner.

&#8220My goal is to get this place so that women are comfortable coming here,” she said. Eventually she'd like to put in some spa facilities.

As for this summer, there will be tour buses to serve - one at a time. No overcrowding will happen. Guests will be in rooms and cabins, and the lodge will help them set up fishing and other tours.

Most importantly, Fred won't be holding down the fort alone during the week, and Phenie won't be commuting up from Anchorage.

&#8220We'll be together as a family again,” she said.

Contact John R. Moses at

352-2270 or john.moses@

frontiersman.com.