The tiki bar sign at Eastbay Lodge is still lit. The parking lot at Ted's Timberlodge still has boat trailers backed up to the launch. If you drove the loop around Lake Holcombe this week, nothing about the shoreline tells you that Labor Day passed on September 7. But something did change, and it changed for exactly one business on this lake, not for all of them.
That's the part worth sorting out if you live here and plan your week around what's open, what's loud, and what's worth the drive on a Tuesday. Some places on Lake Holcombe run on a tourist calendar that starts fresh every Memorial Day and shuts off every Labor Day. Others never built their week around that calendar in the first place. Knowing which is which tells you more about your fall plans than any generic "things to do near the lake" list ever will.
The Calendar That Actually Just Ended
Eastbay Lodge reopened on April 4, 2025, under new owners Bill Bertrand and Ben Abfalter, after the original lodge, built in 1995, had gone into disrepair. What they rebuilt wasn't just a remodeled bar. It was a weekly script. Thursday is "#54745 Night," when the Tiki Bar comes alive and the pizzas start moving. Friday is "Rock the Dock," which rolls straight into "After Hours" inside the Sports Bar once the band wraps. Sunday means brunch from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., with live music carrying across the water into the afternoon. There's also "After Dock," the late-night happy hour for the boats that were supposed to be heading home an hour ago.
None of that is incidental. Eastbay's own event calendar states plainly that live music runs every weekend from Memorial Day to Labor Day, with only "special performances" scheduled through fall and winter. That's the calendar that ended on September 7. The kitchen and bar are still open on their regular hours, Monday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m., Friday and Saturday until 2:30, Sunday from 10 a.m. Nobody's turning off the lights. But the weekly, guaranteed, same-night-every-week show is done until the lodge announces its next special date. If you've been treating Thursday nights at Eastbay as a standing plan, check their site before you drive over expecting the Tiki Bar crowd. The building's open. The script isn't running yet.
The Split You Can't See From the Parking Lot
A quarter mile down the shore, Ted's Timberlodge looks like one business. It isn't, and this is the part locals often get backward when they hear "new owners" and assume it covers the whole property.
The bar at Ted's Timberlodge changed hands under new ownership as of September 19, 2025, close to a year ago now. That's a separate transaction from the resort's eight cabins, which are still booked the old way: by phone, cash or check only, no cards accepted. The resort's own site is explicit about this. The bar has one phone number and one set of new operators. The cabins have a different phone number and the same booking method they've used for years.
That matters if you're the kind of resident who fields questions from visiting family about where to stay versus where to eat. The bar's hours run late, Monday through Thursday from 10:30 a.m. to 2 a.m., Friday to 2:30, and weekends opening as early as 8:30 a.m. for the breakfast crowd that shows up after an early morning on the water. None of that changed with the September ownership shift, and none of it is tied to Memorial Day or Labor Day the way Eastbay's schedule is. The bar just changed operators. The cabins never changed at all.
The Places That Were Never Running on Summer Time
Two more stops on the lake make the contrast even clearer, because they don't observe a tourist season at all.
Cookie's Holcombe Inn, a few miles down 263rd Avenue, serves lunch and dinner, American food and pizza, every single day of the year from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. There's no Memorial Day ramp-up, no Labor Day pullback. It's the kind of hours you'd expect from a place that serves the same regulars in February that it serves in July.
Lake Holcombe Cafe runs on an even more local rhythm: breakfast-forward, family style, the kind of menu that lists caramel apple pancakes and biscuits and gravy next to a Friday fish special. It's a diner in the literal sense, open on a weekly cycle that has nothing to do with boat traffic. Longtime regulars have been glad to see it back in steady operation after a stretch of uncertainty, and its pull has always been the same one that keeps small-town cafes full in January: it's where you go for breakfast on a Saturday, not where you go because the season says so.
Paradise Shores, on Country Highway M, sits somewhere between these two models, and its schedule is worth knowing before you plan a weeknight dinner out. It's closed Mondays and Tuesdays year-round, runs a shorter Wednesday and Thursday window from 4 to 9 p.m., and opens up fully Friday through Sunday. That's not a fall cutback. That's just how the restaurant has always operated, a five-day week built around weekend volume rather than daily tourist traffic.
A Quick Reference for the Next Few Weeks
| Spot | Days Closed | Typical Hours (as of Sept 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Eastbay Lodge | None, but weekly live music paused until special dates announced | Mon-Thu 11am-2am, Fri-Sat 11am-2:30am, Sun 10am-2am |
| Ted's Timberlodge (bar) | None | Mon-Thu 10:30am-2am, Fri 10:30am-2:30am, Sat 8:30am-2:30am, Sun 8:30am-2am |
| Cookie's Holcombe Inn | None | Daily 11am-11pm |
| Paradise Shores | Mon, Tue | Wed-Thu 4-9pm, Fri-Sat 11am-9pm, Sun 11am-6pm |
Hours at small operations like these shift more than a chain restaurant's ever will, especially heading into a Wisconsin fall, so a quick call ahead is never wasted effort.
What the Split Actually Tells You
The lake itself doesn't have a season. Lake Holcombe carries roughly 120 miles of shoreline around the Holcombe Flowage, and the fishing, the boat traffic, and the snowmobile trails that take over once the ice sets in don't check a calendar printed by any one business. What changes is which buildings on that shoreline built their identity around the tourist rush and which ones built it around the people who live here in January just as much as July.
Eastbay Lodge is, by its own design, the one that runs on tourist time. That's not a criticism. It's a business model, and a successful one, built around a lake that fills up with boats for about fifteen weeks a year. Ted's Timberlodge splits the difference, a bar that just changed hands still keeping the same late hours it always has, attached to cabins that never changed their booking process at all. Cookie's and Lake Holcombe Cafe offer a contrast to the seasonal schedules described above.
If you're trying to figure out where the lake still feels busy in October, watch for Eastbay's special fall performances rather than assuming the Thursday and Friday routine just continues. If you want a dependable weeknight option that won't disappear when the boats do, Cookie's and the Ted's bar are the safer bets. And if you're planning a Friday dinner at Paradise Shores, remember that Monday and Tuesday were never on the table to begin with, tourist season or not.
That's the actual local knowledge here. Not a list of everything on the lake, but which parts of it were built to run on somebody else's calendar, and which parts never asked what month it was.
If you're weighing a move to this stretch of the flowage, or wondering how a property here would fit the way you actually want to spend your evenings, that's exactly the kind of on-the-ground detail I walk clients through every day. Reach out to Hantke Homes and schedule your free consultation.
