Cottonwood

So,

To pick up where we left off last time……

Yep, we went to the Blazin’M ranch in Cottonwood for the “COWBOY SHOW AND DINNER”.  They have a big place out of town and as we approached there were about 20 cars in the lot and a tour bus.

We tied The Beast up to the hitching post in the shade, gave him a rubdown and sauntered through the gates.  We size up the town and it’s pretty typical.  A saloon, eating hall and a couple stores along with an olde tyme picture taking shop.  I grab our tickets just as an old “D” model John Deere tractor goes by pulling a wagon full  of senior citizens.  R.P. decides we should let you guys see a picture of us in our trail clothes.

The day was warm and dry and we really appreciated the fact that the whole place is under a big canopy of cottonwood trees. We went through the stores and into a little animated woodcarving display that had some cool mechanical stuff in it.  R.P. then went to the roping area where a couple nice young cowboys was educatin’ folks on how to throw a loop on a horned critter.  R.P. was getting the hang of it when she started goading me into doing it too.  With much reluctance I step into the roping ‘ area and the 18 year old hands me a rope with a kinda loop and gives me some instruction.  I politely listen to him as he tells me how to throw my loop at the steer horns.  I throw the loop exactly as instructed and hit the nose of the roping dummy.  I says hmmmmm, coil my new stiff rope and shake me out a real headers loop and quick as you please lay it over the horns and jerk slack.  My instructor looks at me (old tourist, dressed in shorts and a tank top) and says, “ya could a told me you know how to rope”.  To which it replied that I wanted to gain knowledge from his instruction.  Such fun to have a little fun with the young.

We bored with that game and strolled around the grounds for a while as more folks came in.  I did not take part of the shooting gallery as they were charging 4 bucks to shoot a cylinder of .45 long colt waxies through reproduction Italian made guns.  Not really my thing, and I figured they wouldn’t let me use my Glock.  Eventually they rang the dinner bell and we all filed into the dining hall.   By this time there were 4 tour buses and the parking area was pretty full, we estimated around 300 people, mostly seniors.  By luck or chance (or maybe cause I fibbed about our anniversary date) we were seated at the first table to go for food.  Our host for the evening was Bill Mabry, part of the family, who owns the ranch, and he gave good clear instructions for the evening.  Pretty soon we were filing through the kitchen area with tin plates getting served decent beans, biscuits, baked chicken, ribs and coleslaw with prickly pear jelly added to it for a really sweet taste.  We got back to the tables to be greeted with tin drinking cups and an endless supply of water, tea, lemonade and coffee.   Dessert was  a simple deconstructed apple cobbler that was okay.

After Dinner the show began.  For being what we thought was going to be really cheesy, they surprised us.  The singing and playing was just as good as anything that came out of 1960’s Nashville and the show was based on a hee haw style variety show.  All in all it was a good night.

We still had to drive the hour plus back to Prescott so we went out and woke up The Beast, fed the coordinates to Rocky and headed back into the mountains s, arriving at the Motor Lodge and falling into a great sleep.