Heritage Guest Ranch - Crawford, Nebraska

 State Number Eleven! We hit Nebraska and we are pretty excited about making that milestone - almost a year after we left home.

Heritage Guest Ranch  is a family owned working cattle ranch. Homesteaded over 150 years ago and kept in the same family that entire home, over 3,000 acres of grass and prairie land. The current owners work the property and are trying to keep it going. They have set up a nice guest cottage as well as two lovely apartments in the barn to use as guest rentals.

This little guest cottage is available for rent.

They have an RV hook-up for water and electric. No RV dump or sewer hook-up, but we were only staying a couple of days.

The horses in a large turn out area with shelter and even some patches of grass for them to nibble on. They are really happy with the space.

This pack of rough coat border collies greeted us. They are working dogs - used to keep the cattle in line. They are all friendly, happy pups.

Riding out of the ranch into the grasslands. 

They have a large pond on their property used for watering the cattle.

Jean, the owner, gave me a tour of the various guest accommodations. One of the rooms features a bed made up of large fence posts. She told me that when she was 12, she and her father were out in the fields taking care of the cattle when a blizzard hit. Her dad told her to keep holding onto his coat because once the blizzard started, they wouldn't be able to see or hear anything. They would follow the fence posts to find their way back to their house. But, her dad got tired and sat down leaning against one of the fence posts and started to go asleep. Jean got frightened because if her dad fell asleep, they might die out in the blizzard - only yards from their home. So, she reached out to try and locate the next fence post. When she found it, she woke up her dad and led him back to the house. It turned out that her dad had had a heart attack and that's why he had to sit down. To commemorate their survival, they took down the fence posts that saved them and fashioned them into a four poster bed.

I highly recommend the Heritage Guest Ranch as a place for a layover. You might get to hear some family history as well.

Jean has a couple of peacocks on the property. Apparently, one of the border collies was jealous of one of the peacocks because the peacock would follow Jean around whenever she was outside. So, the dog killed the peacock. Jean kept some of the tail feathers and gave them to us, so they are in our LQ now. I haven't quite figured out where to put them or how to use them. 

About 30 minutes from the Heritage Guest Ranch is Fort Robinson State Park. So, we have landed here for the week. Several horse people have told us that this is the best place to camp with horses in the country, so I am looking forward to our stay.

Curt Gowdy State Park - Wyoming

We waved good-bye to the bison as we left Terry Bison RV Park. We were both pretty disappointed with our stay there. 

But, the good thing about living full time in a trailer is that you don't have to feel stuck in any one place and the next place may be better.

Curt Gowdy State Park is located equidistance between Laramie, WY and Cheyenne, WY.

We checked into the visitor center. There is a great view from the parking lot.

Here is the view from the balcony of the visitor center. You can see the lake below.

The visitor center has great free WIFI and a room where you can set up your laptop/tablet.

There are several campgrounds in the park. Most of the RV sites have full or partial hook-up - EXCEPT for the equestrian campground, where you get NADA. No water, no electric, no sewer, and no cell service.

But, you get a picnic table and a fire ring and a really good sized area to park.

The horses got a large shared pen with a shelter. There was a large water trough filled with water. The rangers filled the water troughs for the horses in anticipation of our arrival. This was AWESOME! We had filled both our water tanks prior to our arrival, but having this done for us was a huge stress off of us.

We spent the next three days riding the trails. Only one trail is marked for equestrians - Lariat trail. But we rode Stone Temple as well as the Rock N Roller trail. We spoke with a ranger and he said that they discourage horses on the other trails because they have had horses spook at the mountain bikes, but if your horses are OK with sharing the trails, you can pretty much ride on any trail as long as it is not specifically marked NO HORSES.

The trails were fabulous. Well marked, easy to follow, well kept. There were some low branches, and tight squeezes between rocks, but overall great riding. We rode barefoot all three days and the horses did just fine.

We did meet the occasional mountain biker, but everyone was polite and kind and, depending on where we were on the trail, either we moved out of the way or they did.

This little mountain blue bird had a nest right next to the horse pen. He would come out and scold the horses. 

You can see the lake in the distance.

Lennox waiting for his dinner.

We went into Cheyenne Wednesday night and visited the Holiday Park. This Mama Goose was taking care of her babies by the lake.

We loved all the rock formations and aspen groves.

Several horse people advised us that the Back Country Horseman have a horse camp called Blair Wallis, primitive camping with corrals set up, just down the road. Also, people recommended riding in Happy Jack - another dispersed camping area close by.

If we had time, we would check out the other places, but we are heading into Nebraska!

Really excited to enter State #11, only 37 more to go.

Ari and I were both really happy with our stay here. This is a great place for horse camping.

 

Terry Bison RV Ranch - Cheyenne, Wyoming

 well, this place was overall a disappointment. They do guided trail rides here and there are trails, but they do not allow boarders to ride on the trails. We also weren't allowed to use the arena or the round pen. So, our horses were basically stuck in their corrals the entire stay. We would take them out and walk them on their lead ropes and let them eat grass for about 30 minutes in the afternoon.

On the plus side, it rained most of our stay so we wouldn't have been able to really ride any way.

The horses have very secure corrals with a small shelter. They are a decent size.

The ranch tells us that they will clean out the stalls for us, but they haven't cleaned our stalls - or as far as we can tell - any stalls. 

Also, there is a hose in the barn across the way, but it is too short to reach our stalls. We asked for another hose so we could refill the buckets, but that never happened. So, Ari is filling small buckets and refilling our water without a hose.

We have full hook-up and the WIFI is pretty good.

The campground is pretty spacious. There are two different playgrounds for the kids.

There is a laundry. We attempted to do laundry here, but none of the dryers work. Ari spent five dollars trying to get our clothes dry before he gave up. We ended up putting our wet clothes into laundry bags and driving them into town to a laundromat. It cost another $1.50 to actually dry the clothes.

Lots of murals and cute art throughout the campground

There are bison out in the back acres of the campgrounds. We are told that the bison are the reason we can't ride on their trails, but that is a bullshit reason. We rode with bison on Antelope Island in Utah. We have ridden through open pastures with cattle. We don't chase the critters. We leave them alone and they leave us alone. Plus, they take trail rides out into the same area and the people on the trail rides are total newbies on a horse. 

There are several newborn foals, which are quite cute. There are also goats, ostriches, and peacocks. My horse does not like the ostriches. So, if they had ostriches out where the bison are, I would agree with their policy about not riding out there.

We did a walking tour of downtown Cheyenne. The walking tour was like this:

Walk to the corner of 15th and Pioneer. If you look to the west corner, you will see the location where the very first bank was built by So and So in 1896. It burned down in 1904. Here is a picture of what it looked like. 

Walk a block west. If you look in the middle of the block, there is the location of a saloon where Doc Holiday played cards. The saloon was demolished in 1934. Here is a picture of what it looked like.

I think Cheyenne was doing their best imitation of a Southerner giving directions - go down this street, turn right where the gas station used to be, keep going until you pass the corner where the bank was..

Downtown also featured several large cowboy boots which were quite cool.

Tomorrow we head to Curt Gowdy State Park. The weather is clearing just in time for us to be able to ride.

Big Iron Ranch - Watkins, CO

 

Moving on to Big Iron Ranch in Watkins, Colorado. We are about 30 miles east of Denver.

The horses have lovely 10' x 10' box stalls with no run out. So again, they are in cramped quarters.

No trails off the property, so we plan to trailer out to ride.

The weather finally cleared up and it looks like sunny weather in the low to mid 70's the rest of the week.

Horses are in the barn on the left. RV/LQ parking is on the right.

We have water and electric hook-up, but no sewer. No RV dump site on the property and we haven't found one near by, so we will be "on the hunt" when we leave for places to dump.

We also need to refill one of our propane tanks as it is empty. We have roughly 40 hours worth of propane left. We use propane to heat our water and for cooking on the range.

There is a menagerie on the ranch. There are goats, lambs, a pig, ducks, geese, turkeys, and even a newborn foal.

Here is the newborn foal with her mom. They are stuck in a box stall as well.

Turkeys, ducks, chickens...they make a lot of noise and our horses aren't quite sure what to do with that.

There are also several friendly dogs who are very anxious to enlist people to play fetch with them. Click the link below to watch the video. 

Dog insisting Ari play fetch

Garden of the Gods - Colorado Springs

 

Well, I went grocery shopping and I stopped at the meat counter at Safeway and a couple of the items on offer surprised me. It is not unusual to see alligator meat or frogs legs at the markets in Louisiana, but a Safeway in Colorado Springs?

And then, a fellow in the campground stopped me while I was loading up feed for the horses.

He offered me this t-shirt with his logo. Apparently, he photographs rodeos for a living. He showed me some of his portfolio and he is quite good. For some reason, he says he is blacklisted from the circuit. So, there is a back story, I have no idea about.

Any way, I got a free t-shirt.

On my bucket list - riding at the Garden of the Gods park. After yesterday's yoga lesson, Ari and I drove into the park to scope out places to park. We found a lot that has horse trailer parking. We decided our best chance of nabbing a spot would be to go during the week and as early as possible.

So, Monday morning bright and early, we headed out with the horses and the lot was empty when we arrived around 9:30 in the morning.

We hadn't had breakfast, so after we parked, I made breakfast in the LQ. It feels a bit decadent to be able to drive somewhere and have a kitchen and bathroom with you.

Breakfast was egg and cheese croissants with turkey bacon and a glass of orange juice.

Views from the trails were spectacular. The trails were actually pretty easy to ride. There was some up and down and some rock face, but, overall, it was a pleasant and fun morning. 

A hiker was kind enough to take our picture...a rare one with both of us. Check out the hoo-doos behind us.

Back in the parking lot

The weather held. There were a few sprinkles as we were loading up to head back to the campground. It kept threatening to rain, but held off most of the day.

Tomorrow we head to the Big Iron Ranch near Denver, CO.