Wintering in Arizona

 Well, two weeks in and things are settling down.

We are currently at a private barn in San Tan Valley. Fellow equestrians have been asking me to reveal my location, but the owner, J, has asked that we keep where are staying on the down-low. He isn't sure if he wants to be a horse motel, but so far he is extremely happy with us.

It is just us, a couple living in a small two bedroom house and the owners, who are staying in a super nice RV on the property. The owners live in Minnesota and bought the property as a foreclosure so they would have some place to spend the winter. They rent the house out to T & L full-time. T & L have two horses - a mare who is in foal and a gelding. So, our two horses have a couple of other horses to converse with.

My horse is still healing from his cinch sore, but it looks like it might finally be healing. I ordered some special rigging for my saddle so I could use a fire center rigging for the cinch to prevent future cinch sores. I am waiting for that to arrive this week so I can get back in the saddle.

A fire center rigging loops in the regular D clip used by the latigo and the read D-clip. It prevents the cinch from moving forward and rubbing the skin, causing a cinch sore. It required a longer strap than the standard latigo.

We paid rent for the last part of November - just two weeks - by mutual agreement with the owner. Neither of us wanted to make a longer commitment just to see how we all got along. We checked in with them yesterday and they said they were really happy with us and we can stay as long as we like and come back whenever we like. So, I guess we will be re-upping to stay here for another month.

The pregnant mare is constantly hungry. I guess she is eating for two. She bangs her feed bucket regularly anytime it is empty. T had asked us if they were waking us up when they left for work in the morning and I said, "No, but Angel banging her feed bucket all the time gets a bit annoying." He agreed and said he would think about taking it down, but so far it is still hanging on the corral, getting banged.

Ari has been riding Lennox almost every day and says the local trails are really nice. We also have our stock trailer ready to go, so hopefully this week or next we will start riding and exploring the trails.

In the meantime, I am doing some work in my office in the back of the trailer, so I am overall pretty darn happy.

When a Good Stay Turns Bad

 We really enjoyed our first week at the Full Circle Ranch....and then the owners, Jim and Lisa Steffen, arrived. It was downhill from there.

I had booked this place with a 50% deposit for a stay from November 1 to January 31. When I booked the place, I checked out the reviews and website. What I didn't know was that all the reviews were for the previous owners. Jim and Lisa purchased the property in 2019 for around $940,00, with a 20% down. It was a well regarded B&B and horse motel. Apparently, the previous owners, having run the business for more than two decades, were getting divorced and needed to sell. 

Jim is a financial planner in Anoka, Minnesota - a small town of about 20,000 people. I can't imagine there are a lot of people in Anoka requiring a financial planner, but whatever. Jim makes in the low six figures and Lisa is a stay at home mom and trophy wife. Their home in Anoka is worth about $400K and they still owe about $100K on it.

Neither of them have any experience or training in the hospitality business. I have no idea what possessed them to purchase a B&B that is worth twice as much as their home in Minnesota with zero experience running a bed and breakfast.

Regardless, the B&B part of the property is beautiful and I really liked the ambience.

About two months prior to our arrival, Jim called me up and told me that they had decided to stop operating as a B&B and switch over to renting over the entire house as a single unit. We could still stay there, but if there were any paying guests staying in the house, we couldn't use the common areas. I figured with COVID-19 there wouldn't be a lot of paying guests. He said he and his family planned to stay there some of the time we were there and during those times we could use the common areas.

When Jim arrived, he insisted we pay him the entire amount due for the rest of our stay. I asked if we would still be able to use the common areas as long as there were no paying guests in the house and he said, yes.

The next day (now that he had all our money), he said we were no longer allowed in the common areas whenever anyone was in the house - including his family and any friends they may allow to use the property for free. Well, you see where this is going. We complained loudly that this is not what we agreed to and this certainly was not what we were paying for. He said he was charging the same amount as the previous owners. We were paying $1000/month for the RV site and $600 for the spaces for the horses. 

The previous owners provided stall cleaning and free bedding for horses. The previous owners allowed people in the RV site access to the common areas - and they were even allowed inside the house to use those common areas, including the kitchen. So, basically they wanted the same amount of money as the previous owners without providing the same amenities.

There are no laundromats within 30 miles of this place, so there is a small stacked washer and dryer unit in the common area. We were told when we arrived that we could use the laundry area and this was an amenity included in what we were paying.

A few days later (as we continued to badger the owner to either provide a partial refund or let us use the common areas) we were told we could no longer use the washer and dryer.

I was also told that it bothered Lisa when I was talking outside on the phone (the reception is really poor inside the trailer due to interference from the trailer), so we needed to stay inside the trailer except when we were taking care of the horses.

Instead of sitting by the pool, we were told we could sit here. This is the area used by the property manager. The property manager smokes, so we were paying $1000/month to share a smoking area with an employee.

The owner put a padlock on the gate so we could no longer access the laundry room or any of the rest of the property.

The shrubs and cactus at the RV site was so overgrown we had to risk getting scraped to get to our vehicles.

This was the view from the front of the trailer. I spent an hour clearing out cactus because I was tired of getting pricked.

We started looking for an exit. The owner refused to give us a refund and we had given him more than five thousand dollars, but we were not going to spend the next three months being miserable. Every day he was figuring out different ways to harass us. 

We figured that the only way to get our money back was to harass him and if necessary we would have to sue him in court. That's when I looked at Jim's finances and realized that it was highly unlikely he had the money on hand to refund our rent.

Meanwhile we also started searching for a new place to go. We wanted to stay in the outer Phoenix area, so Ari could still see his sister and nieces, so that limited our choices.

I posted on the Road Apple Gang Facebook group (a group for horse people who live in their trailers full-time) to let them know what was going on.

I got dozens of recommendations of places to stay. I narrowed it down to three places and we went to check them out. After our experience with Jim, we didn't want to get caught by surprise again.

Jim called the sheriff on us complaining we were trespassing because we were trying to access the common areas. We explained to the sheriff what had happened. The sheriff called Jim and told him to refund our money so we could leave.

We found a private barn about 90 minutes from Cave Creek in San Tan Valley for $650/month. There is no pool or hot tub here, but since we weren't being allowed to use the pool and hot tub at Full Circle Ranch, we weren't really downgrading.

The horses are sharing this large space - yes, all that space for the two horses and they have some shade.

Our RV site is now cactus and shrubbery free. 

Jim refunded us $4,000 of the money we paid him. He kept the remainder of our money for the eighteen days we stayed there. He probably thinks he is ahead of the game because he still ripped us off for that short stay. But, poor, poor Jim does not know how to use social media.

So far, I have written reviews of our stay on TripAdvisor and Yelp. More than one Facebook group for equestrian travelers now knows to avoid the Full Circle Ranch. I have filed a complaint with the local Better Business Bureau. I have contacted websites that advertise B&Bs and informed them that the Full Circle Ranch should be delisted.  He may have succeeded in ripping us off, but his shabby treatment of us is going to cost him a heck of a lot more.  According to one of my Facebook groups, he has already had three cancellations based on my review. Maybe he doesn't care. Maybe he bought the Full Circle Ranch to be a vacation home and a place where he can entertain the clients he overcharges for bad financial advice. Whatever, we no longer have to deal with him.

Overall, we feel lucky. We have stayed at more than 100 horse sites and this is our first truly awful experience. We have a better idea of how to protect ourselves from crooks and we will be a lot more careful when we spend an extended period of time anywhere.

Staying in Cave Creek

 

If we are going to spend three months some place, we are going to need food for the horses. We ordered a mix of alfalfa and grass as well as a couple of bags of supplements and grain. 

Lennox enjoyed the delivery and made sure to sample each bale as it made it's way past him.

The first week of our arrival temps were in the high 90s, so we didn't ride. As soon as the heat wave broke, we hit the trails. We are able to ride to the Maricopa Trail from the ranch. I am not a big fan of the trails so far as they are pretty rocky and not all that pretty.

Ari has been using an app called Gaia on his phone to make sure we are on the right trail.

Our next excursion took us to the Go John Trail, which was a bit prettier with some nice views, but the trail started to get narrow as we headed towards the Overton Trail, so we ended up heading back.

I have been really enjoying the wildlife in the area. Here is a roadrunner, but no coyotes in sight. We hear the local coyote pack howling and yipping most evenings.  We have seen a few coyotes as we are driving or riding, but they run into the shrubbery as soon as they spot us.

I ordered this decal on etsy.com and we really like it. 

So, I have decorated our trailer with a few decals. The two decals on the left are from a BLM group in Oakland. I have been supporting them with donations here and there and the decals are their thank you.

I read on a US Trail rider blog post that putting decals on your trail can act as a theft deterrent. Thieves don't want trailers that are easily identifiable.

I needed an office space to work, so we scrubbed down the back of the trailer where we keep the horses and converted it into a nice office space for me.

I am very happy and comfortable in my new office.

We want to be able to trailer to different trails in the area. We looked at trailer rentals as well as used trailers, but the prices were easily double what we would pay in the Bay Area and not really a good option. So, we ended up paying a guy to bring our stock trailer out from California and he will take it back when we leave here. We like this option a great deal - it's about the same price as renting a trailer for a month and we get a trailer that we are familiar with and like.

Our stock trailer arrives next weekend, so we are anxious to start exploring the area.

Wintering in Cave Creek at the Full Circle Ranch

 Fellow equestrians insisted that we needed to spend at least a few months off the road - "wintering" . Many of them recommended Arizona and we weren't opposed since Ari has family in the Phoenix area.

I booked us at the Full Circle Ranch in Cave Creek because it was the only place I could find that boasted a pool and hot tub. 

Right now the pool and hot tub are undergoing repairs on the electrical systems, but we are able to still using them. We are looking forward to having jets in the hot tub in a couple of weeks.

This is a really pretty place and we are the only ones here, other than a property manager who works during the day.

The horses have upscale paddocks with a run - meaning they can go outside and stretch their legs. We also have access to a good sized arena, so we have putting them in the arena during the day.

We have a full hook-up - water, electric and sewer, so we are pretty set.

Because we are the only ones here, we can spend our days lounging on the patio by the pool and be cozy at night in our trailer.

We plan to put the trailer in for six month service while we are here, plus I want to hire someone to build some cabinetry for me for the trailer.

I plan to keep busy updating my text books as soon as the beta software gets released.

We also hope to buy a small 2 horse trailer to use while we are here, so we can explore the local trails. There are trails off the ranch as well. For now, I am letting my horse have some time off in the hopes his cinch sore will heal.

We have ordered enough hay and other feed supplies to last us until we leave.