Lake home with about 300 ft of shorelineRental Contract required before booking

Note: - Before you book the property, download and read the rental contract. We will not accept any reservation made until we have written proof you have done it. This is due to misunderstandings about smoking, excessive drinking and damages to the property. One group thought it was OK to bring a snowmobile into the living room of one of our properties to work on it. After that, and several other dangerous and expensive damages, we built the property guide explaining what can and can't be done right into the rental contract and people have to read it before I will approve the booking. Even if you paid for the stay already it is has to be accepted within VRBO by us before it is active. Bookings that are not approved by us automatically expire within 24 hours. Please do not rebook if that happens until you have downloaded, read and agree to the rental contract.
The rental contract can be found on the same page as you pay for the rental which is one of the last pages in the booking process. We won't approve any booking until we know that you downloaded and signed the contract and you have stated so in an email to us within VRBO.

Note: Here are some of the rules listed in the contract, but not all of them. The intent is simply o prevent damages by giving the information needed.

- SMOKING IS NOT ALLOWED anywhere on the property meaning you can't
smoke inside or outside at this vacation home. Violators may be asked to leave
because our insurance will not cover damage to the property(s) related to
smoking and we cannot take this financial risk. You cannot smoke there even if you buy property damage insurance or have it with your homeowners insurance.
- NO HEAVY DRINKING. If you have members of your group that drink a lot, (more than 5-6 drinks a night) don't rent this property. This is a place for families to enjoy not a place to drink hard and party. If the neighbors call me about your group or even just a member that is clearly drunk, we may have to remove your entire group and you would loose the rental period and your security deposit. This has never happened in 20 plus years of owning multiple rental properties but we have to protect our license to rent out the house and people getting drunk and rowdy and bothering neighbors jeopardizes that.
- No parties or inviting other people other than what we approved on the
contract or in writing. Email us for approval if someone wants to visit, it is
usually OK if its 2-3 people but we have to know and approve it first.
- No pets (no exceptions). Note: The house is not pet allergen free.
- Majority of the group must be over the age of 35, unless it is a family(s) or
father/son/daughter type combinations. Person signing contract must be
over the age of 35 unless we approve them ahead of time.
- No music outside (Mercer Township has ordinances about this and some neighbors have told me they do not want to hear other peoples music while they are at their place trying to relax.
- No gas motors on the lake. (There isn't a boat launch on the lake so you can't launch your boat. You can bring them and use on many of nearby lakes. There are 7 lakes within about 1 mile and about 100 within 20 miles.
- No charging electric vehicles or plugging in block heaters for diesels on site until we have given written permission. If you do it without asking you will be charged $200 on top of the the electrical bill for that month. Our electrical system is not designed to handle that level of charging/usage and may lead to a fire or damages/loss, which you would be responsible for. There are charging centers in Minocqua and other towns. Typically if someone asks to plug a diesel trucks heater in for 2 hours before departure, we are OK with that and there is no charge, but we need to know first and multiple vehicles cannot be plugged in at one time.

Note: The Administrative Fee that you will see on VRBO's breakdown of the cost is to cover the cost VRBO charges our business for your using a credit card and for booking. We are not charging as much as VRBO charges our business for each booking.

Description:
Big Bear Family Cabins L.L.C. is on a private lake meaning there is no public access, which keeps it much more peaceful and quite. The lake has about 40-70 acres of water depending on who is rating acreage and what depths they count. Typically the DNR only counts water deeper than 3 feet deep so they do not count all the water surface that you see so that is why there can be different acreages posted for a lake.
Neighbors have verbally agreed to not use gas outboards, so it stays quite and peaceful. We also require catch and release fishing for Musky but you can keep other species if they are of legal size and season, and you have a WI fishing license. The lake is a public lake without a public access point.
While there isn't a sand beach or any form of beach to walk along, it is a very nice lake to swim in. The water is clear and clean. We put on life preservers and jump off the pier with our kids (approx 5 feet deep at the end). We then float all over the bay without any real fear of a boat not seeing us because neighbors have informally agreed to not use or allow gas motors.
While swimming it feels like the whole lake is ours because very few people swim and only a few neighbors fish. It has a very nice Northwoods view and feel while in our yard, at the pier or swimming.
The lake bottom is mostly a sand gravel bottom but there are leaves covering the bottom at times so it does not look like sand and gravel. It is not a good lake for very young kids if they are still unstable. We took our kids out a lot when they were only 1-4 but we put life preservers on them and we held them if they were very young while we floated all over the lake.
Off the shore it is immediately 1.5-2 feet deep because it is a hill, and it doesn't have a flat spot along the shore to walk on so we just use the pier. If you want to spend some time on a beach, there is a nice beach in town, a mile or so away at Carro Park. They lined the hill and beach with sand. My kids wanted to go there but rarely spend time on the beach playing in the sand and went right for the playground. That park and beach has a Southern view, playground equipment, pickle ball courts, basketball, baseball etc. courts and fields and a shelter. (There is also a very nice paved bicycle trail system connected to Mercer). What my kids enjoyed more was feeding the small bluegills that cluster around our pier, throwing sticks and rocks into the lake and swimming with their squirt guns while blasting each other and us.

House and Deck:
Our deck looks over approximately 300' of Southwest facing shoreline without neighbors super close. The closest house is about 300-400 feet away though woods. There is a restaurant with a bar within walking distance that was an old lodge. There are some woods separating us from it so we walk down our driveway and over there to eat at. The owners are very nice. We have a pier and several fishing boats with electric motors, canoes, and a paddle boat that are free to use. Just please tie the boats up as instructed and pull the paddle boat up onto the shore and tie it to the tree we keep it by or it will fill with rain and sink. The cleaner cannot do this alone so it is your responsibility to store the canoes and the paddle boat up on the shore where we keep them and to lif the boats up on the boat lifts and tie them up as instructed in the contract/property guide. When not done, they wash away, and or sink when storms come.

The living room has a cathedral ceiling with windows facing the lake. There is a 22' tall stone fireplace from the floor to the ceiling. The Dining room and Master bedroom also face the lake. There is a large deck overlooking the lake and the only neighbors that can be seen from the deck are across the lake.

The lake has good Musky, Bass, and Northern Pike fishing, along with endless bluegills for kids can catch right from the pier.
In addition to the living room mentioned there is a rec room with TV, pool table, air hockey, a basketball game and lots of other games for kids on rainy days.
Almost the entire house interior is cedar or pine and the atmosphere is very lodge-like and while it is not a log cabin it is almost all wood inside and out. .
The end of our driveway directly connects to a branch of the snowmobile and ATV trail. We don't get much traffic here but it is nice to have direct trail access. Guests can walk to a small restaurant about 1/4 mile away,. It is usually open 3-4 days a week.
We have a rental contract that you will need to sign and return before a rental can take place. We need to make sure your group is of legal age and will not violate local ordinances which limit the amount of noise and the number of people that can be at a rental property.
We have 3-4 Smart TV's, with access to the internet so you can bring your Netflix account number or similar streaming passwords to use there. We do not have satellite TV Most shows are now available online through Netflix, YouTube, Prime etc. We do not pay for these options but you can use your account from home on any Smart TV. There are a few channels we get through the air with a TV antenna if the weather is fair.