About the sauna
Try Me Spa Moose sits on roughly eleven acres of second-growth birch, pine, and alder, with a shoreline that curves into a quiet bay. There's no road noise. There's one long gravel drive. The power comes from the grid but most of what matters runs on wood: the sauna stove, the outdoor shower heater in summer, the cooking fire in the guest kitchen.
We've intentionally kept the footprint small. Two sauna cabins (the original "Big Moose" and the smaller "Calf"), a shared changing house, a covered rinsing porch, and a cedar deck that steps down to the dock. That's the whole operation.
Annika keeps the fires, splits most of the wood, and handles bookings. She grew up two coves over and has been tending saunas since she was twelve.
Teo built the cabins — the second one twice, because the first time the roof pitch was wrong — and spends most days in the workshop making ladles, benches, and the occasional boat repair.
Bix is a large and deeply unserious dog who will meet you at the parking spur. He is allowed everywhere except the sauna itself.
We get asked about her more than anything else. She's a full-grown cow, possibly twelve or thirteen years old, and she treats our compost heap as a personal salad bar during late summer. We've never named her — it felt presumptuous — but the business is, obviously, named for her. If you see her, give her a wide berth and the afternoon is yours to brag about.
Sauna culture, done right, is unfussy and communal. It's also deeply private — you're often sitting quietly with people you've just met, in a small room, for a long time. We run the place the way we'd want a place like this run for us: clean, warm, uncrowded, and free of sales pitches. There are no tiered packages. There are no "experiences." There is a fire, a room, a lake, and a towel.
We're open year-round, though the character of a visit shifts with the calendar. Late spring brings black flies and the first swimmable afternoons. High summer is long and green and loud with loons. Autumn is our favorite — still water, yellow birch, woodsmoke weather. Winter is the real thing: snow to the eaves, steam off the plunge hole, and a silence you can hear.