Wednesday in the Collegiate Peaks

'What are the Collegiate Peaks?' you may be asking.  Well, once upon a time a group of folks from the Northeast came out to survey this mountain range, and they were permitted to name them.  And they were from, you guessed it, Princeton, Harvard, Yale and Columbia.  There you have it.  For free.

Our little trip into Buena Vista last night caused us to oversleep this morning. Our niece came to our cabin in a panic because we weren’t at breakfast, and the girls were due at the barn in 15 minutes. So they quickly got dressed and headed down while I went up to the lodge to see about getting breakfast for us lazy people. Sue and her crew fixed me right up with cereal, milk, coffee, coffee cake and monkey bread. They are the most accommodating group of people I’ve ever seen.


Jeff spent the morning resting and working on his book. I worked a little bit and spent some time in the hot tub. Sage gave my shoulder muscles a work out on Tuesday at Cogan’s Ranch. She kept trying to graze, which is a no no, and I kept trying to pull her head up. So the hot tub was just the thing I needed.

Lunch was a cook out at a neighboring ranch. Wednesday lunch means hamburgers, Sue’s famous Cowboy Cookies, and John demonstrating his stellar watermelon cutting skills. He cuts watermelon faster than the eye can take in. Seriously, he cuts a quarter of a watermelon into even slices in probably 2 seconds. It is a sight to behold. Parker, the founder (pictured here), has been to every cookout lunch that we have been to. He seems to enjoy watching all the guests having such fun. 

After lunch is the Deer Valley Ranch family softball game. John’s son pitches, John catches, and everybody who wants to play can. If a kid under 10 gets out, it only counts as half an out. And I think they get something like 5 strikes. It’s so much fun to watch and probably even more fun to play. I have zero hand eye coordination, so I just sit on the sideline and cheer.

As usual, we had to leave the cookout a little bit early to get the girls back for rides. Today they were doing a Level II Instructional Ride. Level II serves to introduce and improve jogging your horse. The same wrangler has taken out the girls’ rides for a couple of days, and they really do harass him. He’s a good natured guy and seems to enjoy the attention, or at least he seems not to mind it.

One of the options available at DVR every year is to have family pictures taken. They bring in a photographer from Great Outdoors Photography who takes family portraits with no sitting fee. He also comes to Wrangler’s Breakfast on Monday and takes pictures of everyone on horseback. On Wednesdays he uses Mt. Princeton as his back drop. We have some of the most gorgeous pictures of our family from him. Each year we have the girls stand behind the rail fence in front of the lodge and he snaps their picture. That is the picture we use to gauge how much they have grown. He does incredible work. We’ve already seen this year’s pictures – as usual they are wonderful. We usually wait until we’re home and can study the pictures on-line before we order.


During the hour before dinner, the staff served appetizers on the deck. Imagine sitting under a big blue sky at the foot of a mountain having juice and appetizers made just for you. Another one of those small things that makes me feel special and appreciated.


Dinner was trout filet or chicken cordon bleu. Dessert was cheesecake which made Mariah very happy. Our sweet server brought Jeff Peach Punch. They are just too good to us.

Usually on Wednesday nights there are hayrides all around. The kids have one and the adults have one. Mother Nature poured some liquid sunshine on all of us and lit up the sky pretty good causing our hayride to be cut short. The kids had a short ride then went back to Centennial Hall to play kickball. I really don’t know how they did that inside, but I’m just telling you what #2 child told me.

Our hayride got started alright. We went up the ridge in an open bed trailer filled with hay bales. Kent, our singing cowboy from the Wranglers’ Breakfast, serenaded us with some beautiful cowboy songs on the way up. Once the truck stopped we got out and walked a few hundred feet to a campfire, sat on logs, and had hot chocolate and molasses cookies. More music and some entertaining cowboy poetry followed. The poet, Big Dave is a jack of all trades around here. I can’t even tell you what all he does, but my favorite thing he does is recite cowboy poetry. You just have to see and hear him to know why he is so popular with the guests. After he finished his second poem tonight, the rains came. And then the vans came. Always thinking of their guests, the folks got vans from the ranch and came to pick us up rather than having us get soaked while riding in the open bed trailer.

There have been years that we had the hayride on nights that were as clear as could be. On those nights you can see a gazillion stars. Us city slickers don’t get to see a night sky like that too often. It looks like God just threw a handful of glitter out there. So beautiful.

Tomorrow we are supposed to go white water rafting on the Arkansas. With rain in the forecast, it could make for an interesting day.


So we don’t miss breakfast again, I’ll call it a night. Thank you for taking this journey with me. I sincerely hope that you can experience this in person with your family soon.