By Steph
So, I’ll be the first to admit, I’ve been a little slack on blogging this winter. I could give all sorts of excuses from lacking good ideas to being distracted by having fun outside to being bogged down with other items on my to-do list–you name it. Nonetheless, I just decided this morning to sit down and write about whatever came to mind.
We’re more than half-way through the winter season at this point, and are in our last week of adult-only vacations. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve all stated, “We love these guests!” and then turn around 2 days later and say the same thing, and then again 3 days later…..point being we have been so lucky to have some amazingly wonderful people choose Vista Verde for their winter vacation this year. From the young honeymooners to the group of gals here for a girls getaway to celebrate their 50th birthday to the returning guests who call this their second home…they’ve all been a blast. It’s fun to come in each day and see what everyone has chosen to do for the day. It’s been a pretty even spread, except for this afternoon when all but 4 guests are going to doing the wine tasting! Cholly will have his hands full, and a lot of fun, I suspect.
A week or so ago, we got a call from our friends at the Belton Ranch. We co-op with them on our cattle round-up in the fall months. There were some cows that we couldn’t get in last fall, and they were finally spotted out in the snow recently. So, a few of the wranglers loaded up the trailer with our most hearty horses and plenty of warm clothes and went out to find those strays. Mission accomplished with only a couple hours of riding. It was a bit of a challenge, but some good cattle dogs helped, along with roping one of the cows to lead the rest in towards the trailer.
While last winter was the winter of overwhelming snow, this winter has been one of hit or miss snow. We’ll have a huge dump of snow, and then nothing for a couple weeks, then another huge dump, etc… right now we’re in a weird “spring break” pattern of sunny days and slushy snow. Go figure, as that is not something we typically see in February! The word around town is that March and April will be huge snow months. Regardless of the conditions, we’re finding good stashes of snow for the backcountry ski tours, and the skating and classic track has been amazing for people who are going out to cross country ski around the ranch. I’ve skated more this year than ever before, and it’s been a blast. It’s also great conditions for snow biking, and of course horse back riding in the snow or a sleigh ride with the sun shining down on you isn’t a bad way to spend the day.
As we get closer to Valentine’s Day, the chefs are preparing for our annual Aphrodisiac Dinner. This year will be interesting as Valentine’s Day falls on the same weekend as President’s Day, so we’ll have families here as well as couples enjoying the romantic weekend in the snow. That kicks off our family times again, and we’ll fire up the kid’s program from now until we finish with our spring break weeks in late-March.
I’ll wrap up with an office update. Beka and Ben have been pouring over the applicants for the summer and interviewing, interviewing, interviewing. They are pretty excited about who they have on board, and have some other great prospects to check out still. We’re also busy working on an updated website. Trying to keep the aspects of our current site that we love, but also make the site more accessible for mobile users. Stay tuned for the launch of the site this spring. In the meantime, keep in touch with us on Facebook, among our other social platforms. We’ll keep posting photos and videos of what’s going on here at the ranch. And, I’ll try to stay up on the blogging a bit more!