MMG Ranch (3)

It has been snowing for the last 2 days, on and off. This prevents the weather from getting too cold, and at least we have no rain, even though it is staring to get quite muddy.
Our main activity has been centered around the following themes :
- practice roping on the horses and on the ground
- feed the cows and horses which are not yet in the pastures, with Jerry (and his taxi Rambo ;) and Paul
- prepare the cattle which will be sold at the end of the week
- spend the evening with Junior and Jason, who are part of the fence team
- Brianna and Wes got a few horses back from their winter pasture, and start them in the indoor arena, and then outdoor (working with the cattle and riding in the mountain), in order to have them ready to be ridden by the guests in May.

This "starting" thing consists in getting the horses used again to anything they will have to deal with, after 6 months without being ridden. This morning, it took us a few hours indoor, making sure they got less nervous (because they get pretty wild after a few months spent wandering in the forest) and could still answer correctly to any instruction they had learned in the past. This gave me the opportunity to work with Taz (the nice pony on the left). And this afternoon, a few hours without any snow allowed us to go for a ride in the mountain. That was awesome, after a few days spent inside.

The coyotes are hanging around, in order to get the placenta each time that a calf is born. They are not afraid at all, and stay pretty close when we go feeding each morning. Fortunately, they are not dangerous for the cattle.

The summary of the last days, but in pictures this time :

Below, a short cattle drive, with Wyatt on the right :

And Taz, during his first ride in 6 months:

"I should've been a Cowboy
I should'be learned to rope and ride
Wearing my six-shooter riding my pony on a cattle drive
Stealing the young girl's hearts
Just like Gene and Roy
Singing those campfire songs
I should've been a Cowboy"

MMG Ranch (2)

Howdy !

The first 2 days of the week have been pretty busy, between the indoor and outdoor horsemanship practice, cow and horse feeding in the morning, the cattle drives (20 one year old cows to bring back from the pastures to the ranch), cutting in order to sort 4 of them out of the group because they are about to be sold, and roping. All of this (apart from roping) with my new buddy Wyatt. The rain showers did not prevent from having a lot of fun !

MMG Ranch (1)

Wouldn't it be nice to have such a house for week ends and holidays, with a nice garden in front of it ? Bad luck, it will just be for one week, but let's enjoy it as much as possible !

First, with an early walk. Don't worry, girls, I am not intending to steal your breakfast, you can keep the whole lot for you...

Boys are showing off a little bit to start the day, you won't change them...

And deer are enjoying the show

Here are a few of my other friends for Sunday (I had the ranch just for me until 2pm) :

,
Doesn't this one look like a teddy bear ?

Those horses have spent the whole winter in the forest, it will soon be the end of the holidays for them, a few of them will be brought back to the ranch by the end of week, then we will be able to start them for the next guests.

The team of the week has arrived, and it will be another chick team : 4 French gals and a Belgian one,, exactly as last year.

The "routine" is now started : cow and horse feeding in the morning with the new crew, then saddling, horsemanship lessons, cattle moving and rides in the forest. Once more, it's gonna be a hard week ;)

"I love this ranch
It's my kind of place
Just walking through the door
Puts a big smile on my face"

Kalispell

Howdy !

Heard on CNN yesterday evening : a guy has just won a bit more than 280,000,000 $ at the lottery (the 10th higher amount ever), and when he was asked what he had planned to do with his money, he answered "pay my bills, have my 2 front teeth replaced, and go to Disneyworld with my wife". Either he has an incredible amount of bills, or he will have to find a few more ideas, if he wants to spend his money...

Seen on the airport "Departures" screens in the part of the SLC airport which is dedicated to domestic flights on small planes: the following list of (absolutely non touristic) destination airports, that I would not be able to locate on a map
- Fresno
- Casper
- Butte
- Lewiston
- Pocatello
- Eugene
- Bozeman
- Boise
Guess what ? I was the only non-US passenger in the terminal, and the US passengers would probably have been surprised to learn that there was an alien among them.

Heard in the plane from Salt Lake City to Kalispell :
- apologies from a member of the crew, because the 20 minutes delay was due to the fact that she had misread the clock at home, and thought that it was 8pm, whereas it was already 9pm, which means that she should already have been at the airport "I asked a friend to drive me to the airport, and to drive at 80 miles per hour, while I changed clothes on the rear seat".
- question from the flight attendant just before closing the door : "Hello guys, this flight is going to Kalispell, are all of you planning to go there ? Yes ? Oki doki, let's move on !"

Seen at the rear of Randy's truck, when he picked me up this morning in Kalispell : a frozen wolf. Seriously. They had to shoot it last week, kept it in the freezer, and brought it today to a taxidermist in order to be able to keep it. OK, to be completely honest, the wolf was in a plastic bag, and what I saw was merely a bag, not the wolf itself, but anyway there was a frozen wolf in the truck! As Randy said : "Only in Americana" ;)

The saying of the day (from Randy) : "You never have too many chicken wings". This might explain why we have just bought 30 pounds of them...

Welcome back to Montana !

Salt Lake City (3 hours later)

Aaaahhh, very very bad weather timing... At least, I saw the Salt Lake City airport under the sun (and also the Utah Rocky Mountains, which is a bit more interesting indeed).

One more picture of something even more valuable for those who got stuck last week (it might seem very common to see scheduled flights, all of them on time, but I will never forget that it might not be the case all the time) :

Back to Salt Lake City

First of all, a short summary of the last week (which should have been the first week at the ranch, thank you Eyjafjallajokull...) :
- stuck in Paris, as millions of other people throughout the world, 4 hours spent at the Air France office on Saturday, waiting for the locksmith to open the door which had been smashed in by angry clients on the previous day (this took 2 hours), then standing in the queue (for one more hour), then waiting for the system to accept and change my ticket (this took 3 different members of the staff, and one more hour), in the middle of crying people, most of them completely desperate, surrounded by policemen (in case of a starting riot) and firemen (in order to deal with extreme cases of desperate people)
- friendly mails received from the Grand in Kalispell and from the ranch, saying that they will deal with whatever happens to my flight schedule by the end of the week, any arrival time or day was fine for them, thank you guys for being so sweet
- a colleague buying me some (very good) chocolate "because it helps in such a situation"
- a striking idea in the middle of a nap on Sunday afternoon, which might result in the addition of an extra room in my appartment (for free !)

But today I am back in Salt Lake City, and things look just exactly the same as last time, exactly one year ago : friendly immigration officers, who take 5 minutes to joke about those crazy French girls who are ready too spend the whole day in planes and airports just to ride a horse ("Don't you have horses in France?"), and try and give some advice about the organization of the week : I tried to convince him that "the cowboys at the ranch" (oh my gosh, if my favorite wranglers could hear this, I am not sure that they would appreciate) did not necessarily have to spend the week teaching me how to use a gun ("in case you get attacked by Indians !".... (no comment) ), and that roping was far enough for what I wanted to do, but there was no way to make him change his mind.

And then the standard surprise for the security officer : "What is this airport code ? FCA ? Never saw it before". Please don't ask me why FCA stands for "Kalispell" or "Glacier National Airport", I wouldn't be able to answer. And of course the usual rain, as ever in Salt Lake City. One day, I will see the Mormon temple below the sun, but I will have to come back a 4th time for that...

Next news from Kalispell (or maybe from the ranch : tonight I won't be at the hotel before midnight, I might want to sleep then...)