NNAOPP Update
August 2022
Lost Valley Ranch
We first journeyed to LVL in 1986 when Lucy was 11 and Ben 5. Judy wrote to the Colorado Chamber of Commerce inquiring about dude ranches, received numerous brochures, selected Lost Valley Ranch, made a reservation, sent in a deposit, and awaited our date with destiny.
Upon leaving the pavement near Deckers, CO one first travels two miles along a treacherous, narrow shelf road. It offers a frightening prospect of sliding into oblivion especially when encountering oncoming traffic. Then there is another seven miles of washboard gravel roads before arriving at a gate featuring the LVL brand. On our first trip we were certain we'd been duped, cheated out of our deposit, and sent on a wild goose chase.
But we were welcomed by young men on horseback in ranch attire to begin the first of many trips to this tranquil valley.
The founding Foster family accumulated about 640 acres that run along a three-mile stretch of Goose Creek located smack dab in the middle of the Pikes Peak National Forest. About 100 horses graze in the verdant valley bracketed by the Sawtooth Mountain range on the west and Sheep's Rock on the east.
The blue skies frame the scenic vistas that alone are worth the price of admission. One can hike or ride for miles on dozens of distinct trails and never encounter anyone other than the 100 guests or 60 staff members.
There are two dozen red-roofed cabins, each with a porch swing, scattered around a large lodge, a trading post, swimming pool, horse barns, spacious lawns, and rodeo arena. The facilities are well maintained, suitably rustic yet well appointed, peaceful, and isolated.
Riding is the primary activity. One can choose a head-to-tail walking ride or something quite vigorous featuring trotting, loping, creek running, and log jumping. It's a very kid-centric place. A wrangler and kid counselor are assigned to each age group (3-5, 6-8, 9-10, 11-12, and teens). Parents see their kids at meal time, bed time, and some of the group activities such as the square dance, hay rides, melodrama, and picnics. The food is plentiful and excellent. It's basically a cruise ship in the Rocky Mountains with horses.
The secret sauce that keeps people coming back year after year is the staff. They recruit uncommonly wholesome college age kids as wranglers, kid counselors, and dining room, kitchen, housekeeping, and maintenance staff. The hiring philosophy is to recruit character then train them for their respective tasks. They do a mighty fine job as each staff member exemplifies a quality service ethic. I know it sounds corny, but the staff serves as role models for the younger kids. As parents we ate it up.
At the end of our first week at Lost Valley, Lucy and Ben bade farewell to their new best friends forever, pledged to stay in touch, and we signed up to return the following summer.
Fast Forward to 2022
So, last week we returned to Lost Valley with grandchildren Waverly (13) and the twins Finn and Charlie (12) for our 18th visit. And the place is still enchanting.
Wavy quickly became fast friends with two other 13-year-old girls and the boys found an equally amenable bunch of buddies.
I can no longer ride, so my activities consist of hiking, reading, banjo practice, and taking pictures of the kids. I hike the trails I used to ride and get in about 5-7 miles/day. On Monday a guy about my age catches up to me as I was walking along the creek and says, "Mind if I join you?" And we chatted while strolling. Dan asked if I was a serious hiker, and I said, no, but I've done some fun hikes mentioning walking across England. He then told me he recently completed 7 marathons, in 7 days, on 7 continents at age 76. (Antarctica, Capetown, Perth, Dubai, Barcelona, Rio, and Miami). "Wow!" I said humbled. Turns out he's a Harvard College grad, an attorney in Madill, OK, has three daughters, and is hosting their families at LVL, their 25th visit. It's apparently a quite accomplished family including one of his sons-in-law, Paul Ryan, former speaker of the house and VP candidate with Mitt Romney in 2012.
Later in the day, Judy reported her first encounter with Paul:
Judy walked up to a fellow guest, "Are you Paul Ryan?" And then, as is her custom, she answered her own question before letting the responder respond. "Of course not. I'll bet a lot of people ask you that. It must get tiresome."
Paul, "Yes I am, but no it doesn't get tiresome."
Judy, "No, you're not really Paul Ryan."
Paul laughingly, "I can show you my driver's license if you'd like."
And his brother in law weighed in, "Yep, that's him. He's from Wisconsin and we're married to sisters."
Judy reports he's youthful looking and very nice. I had a chance to visit with him later. He asked where I was from, and when I told him, he said, "Oh, yes. I met your wife."
Over the next couple of days, I would come to meet an interesting assortment of people either through hiking, dining, or watching kids head out on rides.
It's fairly common for there to be multi-generational guests. Larry from San Francisco is with his two sons and one daughter and their kids. Jen operates a fashion company / church mission in Uganda. Her husband is a cyber security guru. They live in MD. Chris is in charge of drone operations for Calfire (the state agency charged with fighting wildfires), and Steve is an architect in Santa Barbara. Larry was an electrical engineer who worked for the CIA and NSA, and said he would have to kill me if he told me what he did.
Slim, short for Salim, was born and raised in Kenya to an Indian dad and a Canadian mom. He owned and operated a company that makes and services helicopters in Africa, but sold it several years ago. Now he and his wife do early stage investing in tech companies in Africa. He looks just like Elon Musk. He apparently inherited a strong streak of entrepreneurialism from his grandfather, who, in WWII was awarded a contract to weekly cut the hair of the 50,000 British soldiers then stationed in Kenya. He parlayed those earnings into a coffee plantation. Slim and his family live in the DC area and are neighbors of the clan of which Paul Ryan is a part.
Mark is a single Dad with sole custody of three kids from Boone, NC. His twin sons, Philip and Amos are now best buds with Finn and Charlie. He earns his living via real estate development, but his real passion is music. He plays mandolin and sings lead in a southern gospel band. I heard him sing and play on a couple of occasions, and he's extremely talented. And he's a very nice guy. He's graciously agreed to work up a new and improved version of my song, "Three Funerals Shy of Paradise."
On Sunday at the welcoming rodeo, I overheard one person say to another, "I heard the whistler is here this week." This meant nothing to me, until the Wednesday night cookout at the jail (a Potemkin-village-like western town) followed by a program put on by the staff of songs and funny skits. While dining on burgers and brats, we sat at the table with Chris and his wife Chris from the DC area. They have two college age kids who work on the staff. We soon learned that Chris once won first place in the World Whistling contest held in NC. This feat earned him a guest spot on the Jay Leno Show. He said, "Whistling is my passion, but it's certainly not my day job." He graciously performed two tunes during the show, clearly demonstrating his exceptional abilities. Tom, one of his friends later explained, "In his day job he's the director of PR for the Carlyle Group, a large private equity firm."
Tom is ten years younger than I, a recent widower, and we shared several hikes and, being cabin neighbors, shared several glasses of wine before dinner. He was a Washington Post reporter for over 30 years, recently retired, and told many interesting stories about the changing world of newspapers. His primary focus was the business of sports. I mentioned I recently met a young woman from Tribune, KS who just bought the local newspaper. He was shocked, "Oh my, why would anyone do that?" He's now dating an MIT electrical engineer from Turkey where they will soon travel. Surprisingly, he's a thoughtful political conservative.
We dined several times with a couple in their late 50's from Scotland, who now reside in Greenville, SC. They're very nice, but I have to listen closely to understand a word they say. Richard is the head pastor of a 3,000-member Presbyterian church, he and his wife Ruth have been in the US for 15 years, they're both US citizens, and they love Greenville. He always offers a prayer before dining, which is a nice touch.
Another NC couple is living in the cabin next to us. They also have two college age kids working on the staff. Dale owns and operates a cable channel that features old Western tv shows. We learned that the most popular is the B&W versions of Gunsmoke. Barb is a retired prosecuting attorney formerly working in Philadelphia. She said, "Sadly, they no longer need prosecutors in Philly, as they no longer prosecute crimes."
There's the usual smattering of doctors, lawyers, and such, and Lord knows what of the folks do that we've not met. It was fun to interact with this nice group of people.
I took a hike led by a 19-year-old staffer on the maintenance staff. He's from Birmingham, AL and goes to small college in Mississippi. He's hard working kid and told of the various jobs he's had since age 14: working at a Jiffy Lube, being a soda jerk at an ice cream parlor, and his favorite, as an apprentice with a cabinet maker. He also plays mandolin and guitar quite well accompanying many of the performers during the Wednesday night concert. Not surprisingly, he is quite conservative. I opined, "At your current school, you must be spared the strong liberal bias so common in today's universities."
He replied, "Sadly, that is not the case. I've had several professors who are really more like indoctrinators than they are instructors. If one reveals conservative leanings your grades will suffer. If it happens at a Southern Baptist college in Mississippi I can't even imagine what it's like up north."
Helen's Rock
On Friday morning I decided to hike up to Helen's Rock. It's a four-mile roundtrip ascending 1,000 feet from the ranch. Serendipitously, I arrived at the same time as a ride of the younger kids. As I rested, I listened to the outrageous and lengthy story being told by one of the wranglers. I couldn't begin to recount it all, but the tale did incorporate a few of the following elements:
Back in the 1700's a man was playing a game similar to the Price is Right. He had to guess which was more valuable, a lifetime supply of jalapeno-flavored Cheetos or a ranch in the middle of nowhere, in what some day would be Colorado. Our hero won the contest and chose the ranch.
A Chechen woman danced the Chechen wedding dance for our hero, but he couldn't marry her because he was already married. A sniper later took out some villains trying to interfere.
Helen's Rock is really an accumulation of centuries of horse poop.
Horses have to be trained to trot, fart, and poop at the same time.
And so much more. I do remember clearly though his final words:
"So, kids, remember there are three morals to this story. One, treat your horse well, and it will treat you well in kind. Two, don't date more than one person at a time. Unless you plan really well. And Third, don't let anyone tell you what you can or cannot be. Only you can choose your destiny."
Music
After the Friday night melodrama, several of us sat around a campfire and my new, musical friend, said, "I think I need to hear some banjo music.?" I retrieved my Ome open back and complied. Mark borrowed a mandolin from one of the wranglers and we played a few fiddle tunes. We even did a passable version of Dueling Banjos. Then we were joined by two guitar playing guests who were every bit as talented as Mark. I was reminded of the old line by George Gobel, "Did you ever consider that the world was a tuxedo, and you're a pair of brown shoes?" After a bit, I could no longer keep up and instead muted my strings and strummed a percussion rhythm. It was mighty fun though. One of the wranglerettes had a voice like an angel.
Fun Fact
Did you know that the guy who played the banjo on the porch in the 1973 movie Deliverance was paid $500 for that iconic scene? He didn't know a lick of banjo, but it was disguised as the camera avoided close-ups of his hands. He now works for Wal-Mart retrieving carts from the parking lot. He looks like a nice, normal small-town guy. Apparently, it was the make-up that made him look like the product of successive generations of inbreeding.
Tits Up
On Monday I was taking pictures of the kids as they rode off with their respective age group rides. Wavy was in the middle of the pack of teen riders. She was kind of slouched, so I suggested she improve her posture. She basically ignored me until I shouted, "Tits Up!" She groaned theatrically, "Oh Papa!"
But she straightened right up for a great picture.
And, as everyone knows, thirteen-year-old girls have thick skin, so for the remainder of the week whenever she saw me she would shout, "Papa! Tits up!" Kind of makes me tear up.
LVL may be one of the few places left where one can see 50 college aged kids without a single tattoo. Although ranch leadership has transitioned over the decades, the successors to the Fosters continue to recruit staff that are exceptionally personable, hardworking, and comfortable conversing with the adults and interacting with the kids of all ages.
One of the subtle benefits of the ranch is that there is no cell coverage, and Wi-fi is limited to the main lodge. Waverly, Finn, and Charlie reduced their screen times at least a hundredfold and instead became free range children, at least for a week.
And then our enchanting week was over, and we had a nice, uneventful drive back to KC, and we signed up to return next year.
