Western Vacation Ideas | Guest Ranch Vactions

Article from 1995 Still Fresh Today

March 01, 2012

I recently found a file of articles written about Latigo that I’ve clipped and saved for the past 25 years. This was written by a first-time guest, and I thought it was profound when I read it in 1995. It still is. “Lately I’ve learned a lot about horses. And humans. O...

DRA Convention

January 27, 2012

Randy and I just returned from Cody, Wyoming where we spent four days in meetings with other guest ranchers from all over the west. The Dude Ranchers’ Association has been enhancing guest ranching for over 86 years, and touring the Heritage Center in Cody and seeing photos and displays that il...

Moving the horses to winter pasture.

December 01, 2011

A true sign of the shift between summer and winter seasons is the moving of our horse herd down to their winter pasture. Over the years, that has been more of an ordeal than it is now. We have pastured the herd with ranchers as far away as Walden and Fairplay, but for the past 6 winters,...

Fabulous Fall

September 25, 2011

We reached the third week in September with hardly a golden aspen leaf in sight. Usually we’re at our peak of color when the 25th of the month comes around, and we all feared that the record amounts of moisture we received this summer would have negatively affected the turning of the leaves. S...

Winter doesn't want to leave Latigo

May 09, 2011

I’ve postponed writing a new blog because I’ve been waiting for a change in season to signal a memorable place to begin writing. Winter, however, doesn’t seem to want to leave the Latigo region. Here it is, Mother’s Day weekend, and we’re still looking at snow flurries in this week’s forecast. The l...

Mid-Winter Trip

January 27, 2011

Randy and I just returned home from a week in Tucson where we attended the Dude Ranchers’ Association’s annual convention. It was held at the beautiful Tanque Verde Guest Ranch, and in attendance were owners and managers of guest ranches located west of the Mississippi and as far north a...

Christmas Tree F.F.O.

December 12, 2010

When our son, David, was not even a year old, we put him in the back pack and trudged through knee – high snow to find our Christmas tree. It’s been a family tradition every year since. We’ve come to call it an “F.F.O”, which on a good day can stand for Fun Family Outing; on a testy day it...

Another Summer Season & A Beautiful Fall

October 29, 2010

It’s October 26, and I’ve just spent a full hour shoveling snow off our deck. Because of the strong winds that have accompanied this early snowfall, there were places where the snow was 18 inches deep. The good news is that this early storm takes our fire danger down to nearly nothi...

Another Snow Covered Morning ... In Mid-May

May 15, 2010

Winter just doesn’t want to let go of us this year. Here it is, mid-May, and we’re still waking up to snow on the ground. The falling snow has quite a bit of moisture in it, so the branches of the trees are softly laden. It’s a beautiful scene. If it occurred in December, we’d be...

Spring Equinox

March 21, 2010

We celebrated the arrival of the Spring Equinox at the Latigo Dude Ranch by taking a wonderfully long ski on our 11 inches of new snow, and then I made strawberry shortcake for dessert. It was a lovely celebration of spring, in our opinion. The cold front that brought us the snow a f...