After spending the morning watching the parade in Cody, we headed out to Brown Thomas Meadow Ranch where my cousin Charlie is the ranch manager.
With many ranches in Wyoming, they are owned by insanely rich people, who have a full time year round staff keeping the ranch in pristine condition so they may visit there as they please. Depending on the ranch size, and in the case of Brown Thomas Meadows, not only is there a full time chef to feed the workers, the ranch hands, the seasonal employment guys who live dorm style, but there's my cousin Charlie, who as ranch manager, lives with his family in a house built on the ranch.... wouldn't it be nice if all employment came with housing!
And Charlie's office... talk about a man cave!!
The ranch is about an hour outside of Cody aka the middle of nowhere. Here's the view from Charlie's front door.
And here's a view from the back yard.
It's so incredible to be able to spend some time with them, chatting on the porch while the dogs (and Jake and Will) play in the yard, and think what it would be like to have this view, this lifestyle, be every day!
Did I mention I LOOOOVE dogs?
Charlie had to get back to work but my other cousin Will was able to give us a quick tour of the ranch and surrounding area.
Having grown up on another ranch in that area, they took us to where Will and Sarah went to school.
A two room schoolhouse where the younger kids are in one classroom and the older kids in the other. The teacher lives in a cabin off to the side, and to accomodate the variety of ages, one side of the basketball court has a very short hoop, and the other standard size.
Will can still touch the rim =)
Though it takes a little more effort for him to grab the taller one!
Though his basketball dreams didn't quite work out, Will is amazing with horses. He and his girlfriend Sabrina actually train horses to sell for rodeos. And even the ones he's never met, kind of just instantly connect with and flock to him.
While this "city girl" was keeping her distance but having fun taking some pictures.
As we were nearing the valley's edge, we noticed a little smoke, apparently lightning had started a fire on the other side of the ridge... and suddenly big sky country became a very ominous looking big sky!
I tired to not have my camera out too much so I could focus on spending time with my cousins, but other adventures included going to the rodeo, eating Rocky Mountain Oysters and then going to a bar and being blown away when I offered to by the first round of drinks and 2 mixed drinks and 2 beers came to $11. For you bay area peoples you know that would have been the price of ONE drink at an SF bar. Needless to say, I ended up having a really good time with my cousins that night ;-)
Joking aside, it was great to be able to spend this time with family, especially since two of my cousins I hadn't seen since we all looked like this
Though we come from drastically different upbringings (my dinner never once came from the freezer that stored various parts of an animal I had shot myself) we have the same sense of mischief and love of life, something we definitely got through either the genes or influence of our grandpa. Here's to you Poppa! Miss you so much! <3
