The Dude Ranch and the Swedish Cowboy

For the dude ranch Twiggy needed a couple of items, including a hat and a shirt or two.  So we debated whether to go back to Jackson which was 20 minutes minimum in the wrong direction or to take our chances in Dubois, the town nearest the dude ranch.  With prodding from Reagan who wanted to get to the ranch ASAP, Twiggy relented and we decided to see if we could get what she needed in Dubois.  

Grant and Campbell at the Dude Ranch

Twiggy was reluctant to dress the part for another reason as well.  She distinctly remembers a comment made by an old friend who adventure traveled extensively.  His comment about the people/posers that arrived to Africa to climb Kilimanjaro, dressed in expensive "safari attire" as they de-planed from their flight.  With that comment firmly rolling around her mind, she was reluctant to be labeled a poser and get completely gussied up in a new wardrobe of cowboy attire just for a few days riding horses in the middle of Wyoming.  After four days of wearing the same 2 shirts, however, and having ridden through numerous changes in weather, I think she regrets not having more flexibility in her clothing choices.  Everyone, including myself, now appreciates more the functionality of the local attire, most especially the hats, particularly since the weather seems to change literally every 15 minutes.

The Lazy L&B is roughly an hour and a half east of Jackson, WY and located about 20 miles outside the burgeoning town of Dubois, WY, 8 miles or so on a paved road and the rest on a dirt road.  We drove back east over the Continental Divide again through the mountains and dropped down into the high dry desert.  

The location of the ranch

According to its website, "Dubois is an authentic western town located along the Wind River, rimmed by the Absaroka and Wind River Mountains. It's an area of striking contrasts from the badlands to the high peaks. It is among American Cowboy Magazine's Best Rural Towns of 2012."  I would second some of this.  For anyone who has seen the A&E series Longmire, it seems familiar as Absoroka is the fictional county in which Walt Longmire is the sheriff.  The dude ranch is located in a fertile, almost oasis-like dell where the one branch of the Wind River meanders through a valley.  The bottom of the valley, which can't be more than a half mile across, is a verdant, green oasis and a pleasant contrast to the dry, red and white high desert.  Within a short distance are high, forested mountains and productive trout streams.

According to Wikipedia, the town, settled in late 1800's, was originally to be named "Never Sweat" because of the dry winds, but the postal service found the name unacceptable and it was named after an Idaho senator instead.  But the citizens, protesting, rejected the French pronunciation of Dubois and, instead, pronounced it as "Du-Boys".  

Butch Cassidy owned and managed a ranch on the outskirts of Dubois, beginning in 1890.  It is said that he was a frequent customer at Welty's General Store in Dubois, which is still in operation.  We stopped and tried to get our remaining outfitting at Welty's before going on to the Lazy L&B.  They didn't have in stock what we needed however, and we pushed onto the ranch without seeing Butch Cassidy's revolver which supposedly still resides in Welty's.  

We did not really know what to expect at the dude ranch.  I had researched numerous places  and was originally looking for something that was closer to Yellowstone so we could stay the whole week and mix in some sightseeing in the park while staying at the ranch.  Many so-called dude ranches are essentially high end camp/resorts with horseback riding as 1 of many activities offered.  The Lazy L&B was a "live the experience" and was primarily a riding ranch, offering a 3 hour morning as well as a 3 hour afternoon ride each day with the exception of 2 days offering full day rides lasting 8 to 9 hours.  

The ranch sits in a valley in which the East Fork of the Wind River flows.  It creates an oasis in an otherwise dry and seemingly inhospitable environment.  

The ranch is in the river valley surrounded by arid high desert

We were accommodated in a small, comfortable log cabin, named "Red Cliff", with a main bedroom and two small bunk bedrooms on each side.  It was really the first time we could unpack and spread out.  

The ranch had a maximum capacity of 35 people per week, depending on the configuration of the families.  It is the first year of operation under new ownership, having been bought by a  young Canadian family.  The father, a former lumber trader, having sold his company spent over 2 years deciding what to do.  His wife also had an interest in the area as well as some family residing in Jackson.  Their decision to buy the ranch and raise their 3 daughters, aged 13, 11, and 9 was especially interesting to Twiggy.  They moved their family from Montreal, a thriving cosmopolitan city,  to a life on the ranch.  Their daughters would also now be attending school in Dubois, where the number of students does not exceed 12 students per grade.  One of our wranglers, Hunter, decided to quit school in 9th grade and receive his GED because he so disliked his 11 classmates whom he had been attending school with for years. 

We pull into the ranch, quickly get unpacked, and within an hour we are told our assigned horses are saddled up and ready for our first ride with our entire family -- literally over the hills and through the woods.  We get a 3-minute tutorial on how to handle the horses, and off we go.  Our horses are assigned to us for the entire week -- I get Hockey, Reagan has Abigail, Grant has Chalupa, Campbell has Sammy, and Twiggy has Bryan.  These are not East Coast arena horses, one step from the glue factory where you simply lumber along nose to the ass of the horse in front of you.  These are athletic horses that are encouraged to trot and gallop when on flat ground and we are led up and down steep, rocky hills.  At first these large animals are intimidating, but by the end of our stay, everyone is a bit more comfortable around them

Meals are served in a common room.  The food is good, not epicurean, but certainly not campfire cowboy franks and beans or cookout.  And it varies -- one night we had a Mediterranean style meal with hummus and couscous.  Fresh salads and fruit are served and muffins and other goods are baked daily.  There is an honor bar where one can avail themselves of a cocktail or a glass of wine before or after dinner.  That night at dinner we began to get to know some of our fellow guests which included another family of four (mom and three kids moving to Philly from Seattle), Mathias the Swiss guy, returning for his 14th year and in his second week of his annual three- week stay, a French family from New York, three adults from Southern California who owned a Montessori school, and a family from Minnesota.   

Staffing of the ranch was interesting.  Given its location, the ranch has a very short season -- from the first Sunday in June to early September.  They had to hire about a dozen wranglers (horse people), a chef and sous chef, dining staff, housekeeping people, etc.  So these people are seasonal, but many are returning employees from years past. The dining staff consisted of a chef and sous chef/pastry chef, as well as a boyfriend/girlfriend serving staff who would be starting their freshman year of college in September.  She was destined for Colby and he was destined for, I believe, Dennison -- neither of which are slouch colleges.  The housekeeping attendant, Mary Ann, had a husband working nearby at the "Trial Lawyers College".  She was an avid outdoors woman and we were told she would disappear for 3 to 4 days at a time and hike out on her own with just a tent and a few supplies.  She would be the perfect candidate for the Discovery Channel show "Naked and Afraid" where they choose 1 man and 1 woman and see if they can survive 21 days in the jungle.  This chosen lifestyle was so beguiling to Twiggy, who is the antithesis of a Mary Ann.  During our trip through Yellowstone, Twiggy refused to even use the bathroom huts and would wait until we came upon a full service plumbed restroom. 

Then there was Max, the Swedish cowboy.  He spent the summer months at the ranch and the winters in Sweden.  The word is that he spends the winter in Sweden driving a cab -- dressed in his full wrangler attire.  

Max and his girlfriend, Eva

Looking back, I think this was just the right spot for our family.  After six days in a car, the kids could now go about doing what they wanted and quickly found friends among the other kids and 3 daughters of the owners, aged 9, 11, and 13.  It was not too big, it was very family friendly, the owners made us feel as part of their family and it was small enough that we got to know everybody there on a semi-personal basis even though our stay was abbreviated.     

From the second day on, we had a ride in the morning, a break for lunch, and a ride in the afternoon.  As the week progressed, there were a few all day rides, only one of which we participated in.  The kids were separated from the adults and rode with peers -- which ratcheted the stress level down significantly.  Reagan essentially was gone from early morning until well after dusk while the other kids were with their peers for the majority of the day.   It was great having the kids separate as we knew they were having fun and were safe. It was reminiscent of my childhood, where I would disappear during the day on a hike and not reappear again until dusk.   Good for the kids and good for the parents.

On day 2 of our morning ride, as Twiggy and I were riding along the steep, rocky ridges and crossing back and forth across streams, it began to dawn on us that we were in a special place.  The scenery was the most awesome scenery imaginable and varying.  There was high chaparral, sage desert, red mountains striated with white dirt.  There were dry creek beds and washes with branching canyons with juniper, spruce, and cottonwoods.  Sparse at first, more forested in some areas.  There were forested mountains, some areas widely devastated by the pine beetle, with probably 50% or more of the trees clearly dead or dying.  We rode all day and did not see another person, car, or even a road even on a distant ridge line.  We rode through the Wind River Indian Reservation, on Bureau of Land Management land, and on private land.  We saw reasonably fresh kills of deer on our all day ride.  We rode through some of the best fly fishing areas of Wyoming across rivers where our heels and legs would become immersed in cool, clear water as we crossed the stream and where the horses might occasionally drift downstream as they struggled against the current.  

It became apparent that the first few days were not an anomaly.  On the East Coast, it is not uncommon for afternoon or evening thundershowers to crop up in short order.  In Wyoming, the weather changes a lot and quickly.  The skies would go from as blue as a sapphire to stormy in 15 minutes, then back to endless blue sky and then back to thunderstorms again.  So everyone kept a rain jacket as well as a fleece on their horses.  

Needless to say, ibuprofen played a crucial role in Twiggy and my comfort.  After the first day, we would "preload" for the inevitable coming soreness.  That and the end-of-day cocktails kept me going.  At the end of the day we were inevitably tired and bedtime could not come soon enough.

Campbell at the square dance

On the 4th evening, the guests, owners,  as well as many of the wranglers went into town to attend the weekly Square Dance at the one and only bar in Dubois.  The cover charge was $3...drinks were 50 cents.  There were guests from other, nearby ranches, including a surprising number of Europeans and even an Ethiopian oil man and his family.  

First impressions: Stereotypical cowboys are taciturn people -- men of few words, but those words they do utter carry some weight.  There is often basis for these stereotypes.  Each ride we took had two wranglers, one in front and one at the back.  Given there were only roughly six riders in each group, we had plenty of time to "converse".  Now for those of you who know me, know that I am not the most gregarious of humans on the planet.  These guys made me look like a politician.  I did not mind that, and I got some amusement watching the interplay between the men wranglers and the one woman wrangler who accompanied us on a ride.  She was originally from Long Island and an accomplished horseman and business person.  However, she clearly liked to converse more than her male counterparts.  In fact, she was probably in the top 15% of the most talkative people I have met.    It was a case-study in human interaction -- my horse had a proclivity to lag on the first half of each trip (probably because he was carrying the heaviest load).  That allowed me the ability to sit back and observe the interaction of the group -- usually the female wrangler would get engaged in conversation with the women riders and the men would somehow manage to engage in some silent, unspoken form of camaraderie.   Everyone was happy.