Grand Canyon Ranch

I'm not sure what to say about the Grand Canyon Ranch. There are very few places to stay in the area, so Loretta and I decided to venture to a Dude Ranch. Although when I used this term, it was quickly pointed out to me that this was not a 'dude ranch,' but an actual working ranch. Ummm, not really. I learned that on their a 100,000+ acres they only had a couple of hundred head of cattle that they use for rodeos, not steak. In my mind, that's not a working ranch.

We arrived and were immediately seated for a home-style dinner. We met a nice British couple, a quite couple from Puerto Rico, and a loud, drunk, obnoxious Canadian couple. Loretta and I sat quietly as she said that her dream was to visit 'IT-ly.' You know I can't stand someone when I don't bring up my own IT-ly adventures. Purely for narrative reasons, I wish I could remember her name! I know his name was Guy "or as the French pronounce it, Gee," as Ms. Canada proclaimed more then once. Shortly after we sat down, we were joined by Casey, the singing Cowboy. He asked where we were from and quickly broke into a rendition of "New York, New York." How thrilling.

After dinner we all sat around a campfire while Casey entertained us with every country song he knew. He knows them all. The night was beautiful around the fire and the stars were spectacular. Ms. Canada joined the singing at the top of her lungs throughout the evening. Her preference was to sing about 5 seconds behind the music, due to the fact that she didn't know the words. When Casey asked for requests, I wondered if he could play some original music. I hoped this might stop the duet, but I was wrong. The highlight of the evening was when Ms. Canada almost fell in the fire. Shortly after that, Loretta and I went to bed.

I did enjoy talking to some of the non-singing staff while getting our room situation sorted out (at first Loretta and I had only one double bed). It was clear that the real ranch hands prefer to avoid singing-Casey and the overnight guests he is entertaining. After we all made fun of the Canadians for a bit, it came up that they didn't have many American guests. One of the actual ranch hands had joined the conversation (he had to escort the Canadians on a sunset tour), and when he heard that I was from New York he asked a lot of questions about the city. My favorite was "Don't you all have to walk in the same direction on the sidewalk?" Huh? He thought we had one-way sidewalks because of the hordes of people. Despite this, he was still shocked (shocked!) when I said that eight million people live in the city.  Right before Loretta and I boarded the helicopter, we got to watch him and another cowboy wrangle a couple of stray cows off the launch pad. Fun!