John,
This was the most fantastic place I've ever been!
A dude ranch is--uh oh, I am going to assume that you know what a ranch is--a real, often working ranch, where the
owners allow paying guests, who are the "dudes" (city slicker is another term), to stay and have the experience of life on a ranch. We got to go horseback riding twice a
day, took raft trips, had cook-outs, etc. If you had been
coming long enough that they knew you had adequate horsemanship, you could go out with the wranglers in the pre-dawn hours to round up the horses for the day's rides.
(The horses were turned out into the sagebrush overnight.)
The cookouts always were followed by someone in the know getting the owner to tell stories of past exploits, and then by an incredibly handsome, black-haired, blue-eyed, guitar-playing son of the owner giving us some ballads to sing along with. Then we'd mount up and ride home at dusk,
the sunset on the mountains already a memory.
