The Stranger At My Door - Did I Forget to Mention This is a Resort?

It was last fall. It was hunting season. Most dude ranches are open for hunting season. They get lots of buisness from the folks wanting to do outfitting. The guests get to go hunting and ride horses and come back to the ranch for a hot meal and a warm bed. But this place is different. We don't stay open. We close up shop the end of September. We are run by a non-profit organization that is geared torwed education and conservation. This makes hunting a bit of a taboo around here. That's fine, we don't hunt. I know, I call my dear hubby Adventure Man and he doesn't hunt! You're shocked! But that's not the adventure he goes for. He's more into mountain biking and rock climbing, backpacking and river rafting. Strangely we found that the folks on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains were the hunting/fishing kind of men, where as the folks on the western side of the Rocks were more like I described Darling Adventure Man (D.A.M.) But I digress.

It was last fall. The nights had gotten cold and dark. Dinner was over and I was the only one left in the kitchen. I wasn't cleaning up, but just feeding the baby in her highchair. That was when from the darkness out the kitchen window we all heard a loud knock. We were all shocked. There was a man's face at the window. DAM came running. I didn't move. I heard the conversation from my chair. He was a hunter. He came home early because his horse had been injured. He wanted to use the phone.

Ours is the first cabin you would come to, where someone actually lives, if you were to walk out of the mountains heading for any kind of civilization.

He used our phone and went on his way. A few moments later my husband and I looked at each other. What on earth were we thinking??? We just let him head up the road in the dark with a horse who needed a rest! We have a barnyard! We have a truck! Boy did we feel like the least hospitable innkeepers in the world. I'm still kick'n myself!



So who ever you were, I'm sorry I didn't have you in to have some homemade bread and Montana honey while my D.A.M. took your mare out to the barn to be fed! We're sorry we didn't drive you to your truck and trailer instead of making your Dad come and get you off the road. We're just plain sorry!

It's not like we haven't been doing this for a while. I guess we just were so surprised to see anyone out this far that we were taken back.