One of the things I love most about Sandy Valley Ranch is our amazing guests. We have had people from all over the world come and enjoy our little piece of the great American West.
If they stay the night in one of our tiny houses or our covered wagon, Tommy D and I get to join them for a BIG Ranch breakfast.
Afterwords we take them down to the corrals where they can pet Fireball, one of our two huge rodeo bucking bulls. Have you ever been licked by a 2000 lb bucking bull? It’s not for the squeamish. At Sandy Valley Ranch you can join that elite club. Just don’t shake hands with anyone right after. I’m proud to say I’m the one who trained Fireball to lick. (That’s what we call a cowboy fairy tale).
One of our favorite regular visitors is from the UK. He is unique in that he was born with no arms. You can imagine that the first time he walked in, we were pretty amazed, shocked even. But no worries, It doesn’t slow him down one bit. He’s a wonderful rider with great balance, and gallops so well on Chex that Luis can hardly keep up. Fortunately Luis managed to catch up long enough to film this.
We’ve hosted some fabulous riders from the Middle East, Dubai in particular. One was an endurance rider. We took him on a 2 hour gallop over the mountain.
This is not to say everyone who comes out has to be an experienced rider, or have no arms. A French family showed up a couple of evenings ago with 8 year old Olivia. The adults all rode and we popped my grandson’s little saddle (he’s 5) on our mini horse Rock Star. Rocky for short, but shhh. He thinks he’s a big horse. Check out her big smiles. What’s not to love?
