Power Outage Cost Local Hotels Some Business

"I was happy that we had gale force winds," said Peggy Lundy, owner of the Cliff Dweller on Lake Superior. "I said, this is going to be great, the lake is going to be exciting. Well, it was a little too exciting."

"It seemed like they turned something on and it'd be on for five minutes and it'd go right back out again," said Don Stead, CEO of Arrowhead Electric. "Then another tree would fall."

Arrowhead Electric was out bright and early, and some towns like Lutsen were up and running by mid morning. But other folks had longer to wait.

"With no power we had no water, no septic system," said Lundy. "We can't even make keys for them to get into their rooms."

Without these creature comforts, many guests at the Cliff Dweller bugged out early.

"We were supposed to be almost full last night, but we ended up with just five rooms because everyone left," Lundy said.

At the nearby Bluefin Bay Resort, staff used a generator for water and to run their computers. Their power was restored in the early afternoon, but after nearly 24 hours without refrigeration, they had to turn away guests looking for lunch.

"It was the best of a bad situation," said Deb Cushion of Fayette, Iowa. "It was like camping. But it was better because we had a softer bed."

"The toilets in their bathrooms were unable to flush," said Chris Goettl, General Manager for the Americinn. "So I decided, lets use buckets and the pool. We have 30,000 gallons of water there. We took a bucket at a time to rooms to flush toilets that way."

The Americinn got their power back in the afternoon as well. But all three hotels say they have a lot of work to do to get things back to normal.