Day 1: June 16-17, 2000
Drive from Bay Area to Laramie River Ranch, Colorado

We drove out from California to the Laramie River Ranch in Colorado. It took us about a day and a half. We basically got on Interstate 80 from the San Francisco Bay Area and drove east about 1000 miles, getting off in Laramie, Wyoming and going south about 40 miles to the ranch, crossing over into Colorado. Since the drive out was fairly uneventful, I'll keep this short. One of the highlights was a farm stand somewhere between Fairfax and Vacaville, CA that had the best oranges we'd ever tasted. (We also stocked up on pistachio nuts and dried fruits and such for the trip.) We like to listen to audio books while we drive, and we'd listened to the first two books of the Harry Potter series on our last trip to Southwest, so we brought along the tapes of the third book. We got about 70% through the book on the way out and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Western Ridge Motel Wendover, UT

Our first night we stopped for dinner in Elko, Nevada and stayed at a motel in Wendover, UT, which is on the border with Nevada. (We'd gotten out around 11am that morning, so we probably could have made it further if we'd left more like 8 or 9am.) We got into Wendover pretty late, around 10pm or so, and discovered that this was a big weekend there because of some drag racing event and car show. Nearly all the hotels were booked, but we managed to find a room at a semi-run down place. It wasn't the nicest place we've ever stayed, but we didn't feel like driving the 125 miles between there and Salt Lake City, the next town of any size. (It's all salt flats in between.)

Laramie River Ranch Lodge

The next morning we got up early and headed out. We pretty much drove straight through Utah and Wyoming on Route 80, and got to Laramie (near the eastern border of the state) a little before 4pm. We drove 25 miles south on a 2-lane road, then came to a tiny town called Woods Landing where we took a smaller paved road. After 9 miles, we crossed into Colorado and the road became dirt. It was a pretty flat clay road, in really good shape for a non-paved road. After another 6 miles, we saw the ranch on the right. It was around 4:30pm. The area consists of rolling hills of desert, with some snowy peaks in the distance and some reddish buttes nearby. The sky was blue with puffy white clouds, a lovely scene.

There was about 100 feet between the car and the front door, and we got bit by mosquitos about 100 times, once per foot. We went in and were shown a tour of the place and then were shown to our room upstairs in the lodge. They have about 6 cabins behind the lodge, which we later saw — those would have been nice to stay in. The room was small, but nicely done and it had a beautiful view out the window. We brought up our stuff (or some of it), but first said hello to Cody, the ranch dog. We were the last to arrive and they wanted us to get fitted for a saddle, so we did. We met Rollie, the head wrangler, who got us set up. On the board we saw that Walendo's horse was Cheyenne and mine was Flax. After that, I went to pick out some riding boots. None were a perfect fit but the closest was a pair with somewhat higher heels than I'd like, but I took them anyway because the fit was good and they were pretty stiff so they had good support.

We sat out in the great room and met some of the other guests. There were two sisters from England, Penny and Vicky, both of whom have ridden a lot, though English style. Vicky is an assistant professor of biology at University of Chicago; her sister Penny lives in England, somewhere near Dorset, and she had a husband and three sons and runs a boarding kennel for dogs and cats. She was friendly and chatty and very enthusiastic about being there. We also briefly met four women, Donna and Cheryl, and Joy & Mary. Cheryl also had a lot of experience with horses, but the others were beginners. Jim and Chris were also beginners.

Back porch of lodge

While we were waiting for dinner, Bill (who owns the place with his wife Krista and toddler son Christopher) told us about how they found and then renovated the ranch. It had been a dude ranch for about 50 years, but then it was abandoned about 15 years before they bought it. They showed us before and after pictures, and Bill talked us through them, pointing out how run down the buildings had gotten (or how poorly done they'd been in the first place) and then all the renovations they did to improve them. They hired a lot of contractors but also did a lot of the work themselves. They did things like add support beams to the great room ceiling, knock down walls, reconstruct the external walls of the cabins, dig ditches for drainage, rebuild the foundation, and on and on.

Bill Burleigh, ranch owner

They added the dining room, which is a big high-ceilinged room with huge windows looking out to the beautiful western view. They also added a back porch, which looks out on the same view and is a nice place to hang out. And they made sure to put bathrooms in all the rooms, which was the right thing to do, IMO. He had been a computer programmer and had never done anything like this, but Krista grew up going to dude ranches each summer. It sounded like a lot of work but a labor of love, and they were clearly very proud of the result. It really is a lovely place and they'd done a great job with the buildings. I asked about how they financed it, whether you get a small business loan and he said you can't really do that, that the family invested, partly to make money but more to help them take this on.

At dinner, they served ribs and corn on the cob and beans, with a brownie sundae for dessert, yum. I'm not a huge fan of ribs, but I hadn't asked for the veggie option early enough so I had some. The food was quite good. After dinner, we sat out in the great room and read for a while, and eventually I went upstairs. I was pretty exhausted, so I read for a while and then went to sleep around 9:30. Walendo was still downstairs, apparently talking with Bill and giving him moral support as he reinstalled Windows because he wanted to replace his internal modem with an external one. Obviously, you'd need to reinstall the window system for that. It's funny, it was just like home, him staying up late to "noodle" on the computer, this time with a friend.

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