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.