This is one happy cowpoke. He has been wanting to ride a horse since he was about seven-years-old, but every time we try, something seems to get in the way.
This year for Spring Break, we booked three nights at the Mayan Ranch in Bandera, Texas. It's a 300 acre dude ranch run by the Hicks family where the food and the horses are the main attraction. We got to go on trail rides twice a day. My bum was sore by the end of the first day, but Brendan just had to ride, and he wanted me with him (one of the rare times anymore), so I sucked it up and rode.
People from around the world come to the ranch for that "true cowboy experience" - and they dress in funny boots and hats, too. There were people from Germany and a family from Japan there during our stay. Even in the winter/spring, before things really green up, the countryside is beautiful. The ranch is bordered by the Medina river which is great for tubing in the hot summer, and when you ride, you get to go all around the ranch, up the hills, through the trees, etc... You get to see wild deer, turkeys and peacocks. We stayed in a rustic cabin, took a hayride to an outdoor cowboy breakfast, and toasted marshmallows over a bonfire at night. We fished in the river and played tennis on the new courts right outside our cabin.
The food was excellent - bbq brisket, sausage, steak, chicken with all the fixings. We were always entertained with authentic western music and old cowboy tunes. We missed Mexican night, with margaritas and mariachis, which really bummed me out, but we couldn't stay the whole week.
Each afternoon, there were snacks and entertainment. We had a trick roper, who cracked a mean bullwhip, and a man who brought out two young bison. There was a magician for the kids and a man who told Wild West stories and passed around replica guns.
I was a little disappointed that there weren't more organized things to do during the day. Perhaps that was intentional so there would be some down time. It was too cold to swim and the kids ran a little wild. They had one horseshoe pitch, which was broken, one ping-pong table and one shuffle board. And there was only one bbgun to go around for 30 kids in the bbgun shoot. I found out they weren't running a full week-long schedule, like they do in the summer. According to the website, there should have been archery and a talent show. Perhaps that happened on the weekend, when we weren't there.
Overall, we had a great time. Brendan couldn't get enough of the horses, and we were only ten minutes away from my folks. Who knew such a gem was hiding in the hills on the other side of town. Yee haw!
