Cowboy fantasies on a ranch in Montana

The Telegraph ^ | 2-5-2012 | Ian Henderson

[Dysart]

Imagine you're a 12-year-old girl[or POTUS]. Ponies and clothes are your favourite things. You've just been shopping and you're wearing your new cowboy boots, new jeans, a blue checked shirt and a real cowboy hat. You've had breakfast – blueberry pancakes with crispy bacon, just the way you like them – and now you're walking across a sunlit meadow, filled with gently grazing ponies. You're feeling pretty good.

A tall cowboy with a slow drawl asks if you'd care to help him round up the ponies into the corral so you say yes, as casually as you can. The ponies neigh and toss their manes, kicking up dust and jostling as you lean over the wooden rails to share your apple with a fine chestnut quarter horse called Rudy. You lead him into the yard, feed him and groom him, saddle him up and get ready to go for a ride in the mountains. If you're imagining it properly, you're about as happy as a 12-year-old girl can be.

Which is not bad if you're her father, either. I'd taken my daughter to The Ranch at Rock Creek, a 6,000-acre spread in Montana which opened to guests last year and may well be the ultimate place to live out those cowboy dreams, whatever your age. That was certainly the intention of Jim Manley, a New York financier who bought it after a 40-year search for a pristine stretch of wilderness with a river, native forests, elk and deer but no grizzlies or rattlesnakes. He wanted somewhere he could hike, ride and shoot. Somewhere he could encourage others to adopt the frontier spirit – while making sure they didn't miss any of the comforts of modern life.

[Rebelbase]

Looks like the site where they built the ranch in Lonesome Dove.

[Dysart]

Yeah, it sure does. And btw, “Lonesome Dove” is one of my favorites. Probably because it’s one of the best series ever commissioned.

[Hot Tabasco]

My half-brother lived in Missoula, one of my only regrets is never having gone out to visit him...........