Day Two - Wilderness Tour and an Awesome Dinner

So once we got done with lunch, we headed to the Stage Stop for our next activity, the Wilderness Tour. It was a nice wind down for the day, but could have been a bit more exciting. We first drove around with two instructors while they showed up some of the wildlife on the ranch. We saw a pretty blue bird, some Magpies, a Bald eagle feeding off a dead deer stuck to a barbed wire fence (eeuw, I know), a bunch of White Tailed Deer, and a few hawks. Then we stopped at a tent and wandered a little. In one spot they had a recent dead deer where they had a motion camera so they could see what wildlife was in the area. One picture they showed us was the back of a mountain lions head! The also documented badgers, pack rats, and deer. Then they lead us to another spot where they had two skulls, one from an elk, and a deer. One thing I learned is that Elk have literal ivory tusks, but they only grow to about a half inch or so. Lastly they took us back to the tent, where they showed us the picture from the camera, some pelts, which included a brown black bear, a fox, and a bobcat. And they showed us the skulls in the picture below.

A beaver , a pack rat, a badger, a deer, and a bobcat.

 

We headed back to the ranch town after the tour, where we relaxed for a little while before going to the saloon to relax more before dinner. Then dinner was announced, well two dinners. One was in the saloon, and the other in the Livery. We ended up going to the livery and stayed there until we went to our room. The dinner was Awesome, and so was desert, which was a build your own Sunday, with house made vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry ice cream! Yummy.

Most of the coolest group at the ranch, hehe. Plus one of the many coolest staff, Jessica! (She's in the black cowboy hat)

This awesome kitty was in the rafters of the Livery.

James doing karaoke of Journey's Don't Stop Believing.

Our awesome group ended up doing the most karaoke that night. I only got a small video of James singing Journey, and his second song, Blink 182's What's My Age Again, he hasn't uploaded yet. I originally wasn't gonna sing any songs, but near the end of the night, I joined the girls to do two songs.

The awesome girls. Summer, Tifini, Sarah, me, and Cristen.

And the awesome guys. Peter, Zach, Jake, James, and Tommy.

Once we finished with the last song or so, we headed back to our room, to sleep and get ready for the next day...

Day Three - Archery and Snowmobiling

We got up early, again, so we could get some yummalicious breakfast before heading to our first activity that day. The day before we heard that Snow Tubing might be canceled in the morning, which was to be our first activity, so we went and switched to Archery. It was good that we switched, because Tubing was indeed canceled that day. There were about 8 peoples signed up for archery. The instructors drove us back behind the town a bit to where they had two normal bulls eye targets, then a bunch of foam 3D animal targets in a ravine. 

Some were hard, but the easiest was the most amusing for me. It was brown bear standing up. My first two shots went in its chest area, then my last shot I decided to aim for its crotch, which I hit, hehe. I sorta freaked out the guys. And James ended up shooting it directly in its left eye!

James taking aim.

The mini blizzard that hit while we were shooting!

After archery, we relaxed for a few during lunch before heading back to get the full snow suits on. We looked more like we were getting ready to jump out of a plane than use snowmobiles, lol. The first part of the activity was the intro, where we learned how to use the machines. For both James and I, we liked the intro the best. One of the two instructors in our group was nicknames Mr Cupcake. He was awesome, and decided to pick on me the whole intro trip.Though it's probably because I got my machine stuck four times, lol.

Snowball fight!

 

Mr Cupcake in the yellow helmet.

The trail ride was different. I decided to be a passenger because I wanted that aspect of the activity. In total the ride was 18 miles. James rode on his own the whole ride. Nine miles in, we stopped at the rendezvous point, which was pretty nice.    

James was glad to be done though. The snowmobiles are definitely a work out...

Day Three - Dinner

Once we sat for a minute to calm our bodies from the Snowmobile ride, we went to our room and took a nap before dinner. That night dinner was only in the Livery. They were doing a poker tournament, along with black jack (which James was at pretty much the second it opened), and chair massages. Once the delicious dinner was done, all the staff came out and thanked us for beliving that the trip was real, and of course everyone thanked them too for being awesome. James played Black Jack for awhile while I watched the live band they had that night. One of the guys in the band was an amazing fiddler! The first song they did, the whole staff came back out and danced to it, which was fun to watch.

James drinking while playing black jack, lol

 I ended up playing black jack with James for a little while before we went and had a massage. Ooooh the massages were sooo nice.
As the night ended, we got a picture of the staff night manager, Billy Ray. He was one of the many awesome staff on the ranch.

After that, we went back to our room to stuff all our goodies into out bags so they would be ready in the morning...

Day Four - We don't wanna go home yet!

Hearing our alarms that morning sucked. We didn't want to leave. Reluctantly, we got up and dressed, blah blah blah. We made sure everything was in either our check on bags, or our carry-ons. Before heading to the saloon for our last breakfast, we made sure our bags were outside of our room, so the staff could grab them to put on the bus. We had to wait in the saloon for about two hours before our bus was ready to leave. We ended up wandering around outside for a bit, having fun taking pictures of the cool buildings and signs. It was kind of nice, since we were the first bus to get to the ranch, and the last one to leave, so we had the most time there...

But it also was sad because we got to watch all our cool couples leave before us. I was close to almost crying a few times. When we turned our room keys in, they gave both of us leather bound photo albums, with pictures taken by ranch staff. It was our last gift from the ranch.
Once the bus got there, we reluctantly boarded, watching as the ranch faded behind us. The trip back to the airport was beautiful though, so we were able to enjoy that. At the airport, we got our luggage and checked in, James getting one more smoke in before heading through security. As we waited for the plane to arrive, we discovered some of the staff and security would be on the same plane as us! It was also nice that we were sitting near the security from the ranch because the plane got delayed and ranch security immediately called Marlboro to make sure everything would go okay. A few of the security staff ended up getting booked on different planes, but one security, and two ranch staff stayed on our flight, and sat near us. It felt like we were able to enjoy the ranch for just a bit longer. After that things went how they should have, for the most part...