LIFE OF A LOST VALLEY RANCH TOWEL

The towels arrive in their Sysco boxes ecstatic for their new life at JVL.
After unpacking they have their virgin journey to one of the 24 cabins to assist the guests in their drying.
The towels quickly become adjusted to life on the ranch as day after day they get shuttled in Mona from the Comm to the Cabins and back again.
The learn to have a great appreciation for the cabin girl's hard work of bathing them and folding them into perfect thirds to be ready for the next guests.
As they wait on the shelves, soak up water, and scrub guest's faces they slowly start to lost their shine. Holes, tears, bleach stains, and fraying ends mark the oldest most experienced towels.
Eventually those wise old towels get branded with a black "S." Marking them as insignificant and they get shafted to the Staff.
The Staff for some unknown reason do NOT give the towels baths as often as the cabin girl's did. The unlucky "S" towels that get stuck in the abyss of the Upper Bunkhouse with the wranglers miraciously turn from pink to manure brown in a matter of days.
This becomes to much for those old worn out towels and they are rescued by those loving cabin girls who shred them into handy dandy cabin girl rags.
Those rags are then used for cleaning toilets, sinks, tubs, floors, light fixtures, windowsills, lamps, tables, hide-a-beds, baseboards, walls, shelves, drawers, mirrors, and your occasional spiderweb.
The life of a Lost Valley Ranch Towel is long and hard but appreciated by any cabin girl who's ever hung out the door of Mona.


-written by Hannah J and Leslie U

SLEDDING, S'MORES, MAFIA

Starting at the left going to the right, the top row of people: Alison in the red coat, Taylor also in red, Russel in Green, Tony in red on the right. Back to the left below Alison, left to right: Sable in the white scarf, Jen Ham in the very front, Jenny the cook in the brown, Heather in the bright blue behind Jenny, Caroline in the white, Peter in the gray-ish coat, Me in the bright blue, Jordan in the white coat with furry hat, Allie at the end in front of Tony. And Jimbo is taking the picture.

Last night we went sledding. JVL style.
We hiked down to the Jail (this site down the valley about a mile and a half that we take hay rides to or have lumberjack breakfasts at) in our gear hauling inflatable tubes (like the one Russel is holding up in the above picture). We get to the foot of the "hill" we were going to sled and realize that duh there is 4ft of snow on it. 4ft does NOT make for a fast ride or an easy hike up. This hill is about twice the height of the big hill on Mt. Trashmore. Hiking up to the top was probably harder then any 2k race I've been in. No kidding. It took everyone going down at least three times (and hiking back up) before the track was perfect. But it was well worth it; we sledded by the light of an almost full moon.
If you went down head first there was this bump where you'd get some air and flip over and if you were good could catch your tube midair, land on it, and head the rest of the way down.
Then we started making chains. We started out with a chain of oh only three people but by the last run we attempted to make one long chain of all 14 people. We only had six tubes though so we had multiple layers. It wasn't the fastest ride but it was definitely the most fun.

We headed back to the lodge and the fireplace in the dining room to make s'mores. The DR has one the biggest fireplaces I've ever seen. So we could fit about ten of us roasting marshmallows at a time.
We topped of our night of being kids by playing mafia. Basically you can't beat a night of sledding, s'mores, and mafia.

MOOSE HEAD COLLISONS

It's been almost a week since I've posted. I'm sorry.
I've worked 10-12 hour days all week getting ready for our first guests and then dealing with the guests.
Our first group of guests where a group of single American born Chinese who arrived on Valentine's Day and leave tomorrow morning. They started arriving about 2pm on Thursday. All week it was gorgeous clear skies with temps in the 40s until Thursday morning when it starts snowing and about a foot of snow is expected to snow by noon. Problem. The ranch is in the middle of nowhere, down a one lane dirt road clinging to cliffs. Meaning no plows or anything besides a 4-wheel vehicle will be able to get down the last 9mi. of road to us. So at 5:30am everyone was up. All the boys out shoveling (if guests slip and break anything they can sue us for everything we have) and all the girls are running around cooking breakfast (the kitchen guys are out shoveling) and running last minute needs/making beds (I made about 50 beds that day). Everyone got 15 min meal breaks and then we were was back to running around like a chicken with our heads cut off. To get the 85+ guests down those last 9mi. we used ranch vehiles to shuttle them it. Which just pulled staff away from helping get ready. I spent all day driving Mona with Hannah, going to all 24 cabins with a clipboard stuffed full of needs for each cabin and trying not to fall on our butts. It was INSANE. All the staff have walkie-talkies and I don't think there was a moment of silence over the air the whole day. But we did. By the time guests started arriving everything looked normal. (At least until the heater broke in Cripple Creek Cabin at midnight and Mike, the head maintenance guy, who'd already worked 19 hrs straight, had to go fix it)

It's odd having guests finally. Everyone's now on their best behavior and the staff room is a revolving door now instead of a lounge.

On Friday I finally got a little more then an hour off before dinner and I went on a run. Stupid altitude sucking all the oxygen out of the air. I ran past Peter and Tony taking out a ride of guests. I pasted them on my way back also and Tony started following me and one of the ladies riding started freaking out and saying, "The horse! The horse! Don't let it kick her!" It was highly amusing considering Tony is the last person in the whole world that a horse would get out of control for PLUS he was riding Sweety who lives up to her name. Tony was only joking, like always.

Square Dance that night. and guess who got hurt? Yep. Me. I got a concussion. Yes, go ahead and laugh. I got a concussion at a square dance. How? Well, there's this thing called a "rip and snort" where you dive across the square and under the arms of the couple across from you. I was across the square from one of the kitchen guys named Moose (that's his nickname, don't worry.) Moose is BIG. Like my coach Mike BIG. A good 6'4" with about 250 lbs on him. and for some reason when "rip and snort" was called Moose decides he's going to dive under my arm but I'm diving under his arm at the same time. and crash head collision. Moose doesn't even blink but I get sent reeling backwards. It was bad. My headache progressed all night and I threw up during the night and I was my stupid self and got up and worked this morning. Needless to say that wasn't great. My balance was awful (and it was icy) and I couldn't really focus on words or anything. bad bad bad.
I'm my stupid self and keep telling Jenn Ham, my boss, that I'm fine and I'm not going to over do it. But of course do I know my limits? Ha.

J Ham marched me back to my room at lunch, and her and Hannah tucked me in. and I zonked out. I slept for about four hours straight of probably the deepest sleep possible while still being conscience. I woke up feeling about 85% better. I can now balance and focus my eyes. But my headache is still this dull ache. yuck.

HAVE YOU SEEN MY LIMO?

Yesterday was our day off. Five of us girls went into Woodland Park, the nearest town town, and went shopping. At Walmart.

One of the girls, *Rachel, wanted to listen to Backstreet Boys and Disney songs the whole way. That was very quickly shot down by the other four us. One song maybe, but 45 minutes of it? No thanks. Unfortunately she was sitting shotgun meaning she was controlling the iPod and we had to keep grabbing it from her and changing it. Needless to say by the time we arrived at Walmart my fuse with her was very short.

Walmart is dangerous. I've never really spent a lot of time at Walmart until being out here so I didn't realize that you go in with only three things on your list and come out two hours later having spent three times as mush as you planned.

*Anna and I spent most of the time searching for Batman and Transformers stuff to make a birthday present for her friend. and *Rachel followed us around the whole time chattering away about who knows what. But all you people who know me know that when I'm on a short fuse with someone they should steer clear of me. *Rachel did not understand this. At one point I stood and compared metal closet hangers vs wooden closet hangers just so she'd walk away and I could disappear into the aisles of Walmart. When I met up with her thirty minutes later she started singing Disney songs and I snapped. Let just say it wasn't good. It was bad. She avoided the rest of the day and I have yet to see her today. So we'll see...

I calmed down by getting a pedicure. We all did. In Walmart. It was pretty sweet. My polish is called "Have You Seen My Limo?"

We went to dinner at this Mexican restaurant. (*Rachel sat at the far end of the table from me.) and we pretended it was *Anna's birthday so we got free dessert and she got whip cream in her face. It was pretty sweet.

On the way home we stopped halfway down the dirt road to the ranch, climbed out, and just stood in the complete silence staring at the stars. More white stars then black sky.

I've introduced the card game Up and Down the River to the folks game the other night. I've already played 7+ games since Thursday night.

LIQUOR AND ICE CREAM

I smell like hay/alfalfa with a hint of LOC (Liquid Organic Cleaner, which you can eat if you want. I wouldn't suggest it though. It tastes like soap. Big surprise there) mixed in.
That's because I spent my day cleaning cabins and feeding horses.
I can't move and I need to shower before dinner because no one ever goes to dinner dirty. So all staff showers between 5 and 6 everyday. So If I don't hurry they'll be no hot water left. not cool. actually it will be cool temperature just not ok.

As we clean we listen to music. We keep forgetting our cds so we listen to "Denver's New Country Station KYGO!" Now any country song that comes on there is a 95% chance I could sing every word of it. Not exaggerating at all. Country music grows on you though. The one time we weren't listening to country today was in the barn when Biff, one of the wranglers, decided he wanted to listen to Dirty Dancing Havana Nights and no one was going to argue. Lisa: I thought of you and Larry Goes to Michigan when we were listening to it.

It's been snowing on and off the past couple of days here. So there's about three feet of snow with a layer of ice on the bottom everywhere. Our handy dandy maintenance guys have been shoveling and plowing nonstop it seems. So it's not really a pain to get around. It's just super pretty.

I forgot to add my address last post:
Leslie Urban
Lost Valley Ranch
29555 Goose Creak Road
Sedalia, CO 80135

It's funny because Sedalia is about an hour and a half East of us. The nearest town is Deckers and is about 12 miles away, or a half hour. Deckers actually just lost it's town status it's so small. It has all the essentials of a town though: a place to get liquor, coffee, fish bait, and ice cream.
What more could you ask for?

AIR THAT NEEDS MORE OXYGEN

Finally! I'm on the internet.

So much to say.

I'm in the middle of nowhere. Literally. It's amazing. To get to the ranch you drive an hour plus out of Denver, then down a two lane deserted highway through the mountains and then another half hour down a one land dirty road that is so bumpy it buzzes up your spine with every curve.

It snows every night and I wake up each morning to the smell of bacon because I live in the kitchen bunk house. It's -10 degrees in the morning, not exaggerating, and by two every afternoon it's 50 degrees and I was walking around the ranch in a t-shirt. 

I look out my window to the sun rising over the mountains. It's spectacular here. How do I life without mountains?

Last night I walked outside and thought the stars were fake there were so many. It was so bright just from star light. and the air here is delicious. I just want to stand outside and breathe. Only problem: it needs more oxygen in it. The first couple days I had a MASSIVE headache and I'm still constantly yawning.

The main hill on the ranch is called Coronary Hill. This morning I was up at the top of the hill sweeping a porch of one of the cabins and I look down Coronary Hill and see Tony, the ranch foreman (who has probably the cutiest baby I've ever met. Her name's Becca and she's turning one of Thursday and lets anyone hold her and is always "talking" away.) waaaay down at the bottom. He looks about the height of my thumb to give you an idea how big this hill is. and I stop sweeping and the only sound I can here is Tony's footsteps. Clear as day I can hear them. and nothing else. Why do I live in the city again?

So it's spring cleaning time. Meaning Cleaning with a capital C. We walk into the building and pull everything off the walls and pile all the furniture in the middle of the room. "Nothing left untouched." We scrub the furniture. We scrub the walls. We scrub the bathrooms. We even scrub the ceilings. It's ridiculous. We scrub the radiators. We scrub the lambs. We scrub the closets. It's insane. But let me tell you when we're done there's never been anything so clean. It's ridiculously hard work. By the time bedtime comes around we crash. Normally around 9:30.

The cabin girls' van is called Mona. Picture a white kidnapping van. Now take out all the back seats. Take off all her sliding doors so there's a gapping hole in the side, beat her up a bit, and make her temperamental. That is Mona. She's amazing. She hauls us and all our gear up Coronary Hill multiple times a day and we only have to try starting her a minimum of twice. Most of the time we hang out the hole where the door should be or smash waaaay to many people in the front seat. She's a pretty sweet ride.

I've made friends with one of the ranch dogs. His name is Tex. He follows me everywhere. He's like my shadow. He carries around a stick and is always wanting me to play fetch with him. When I'm inside a cabin cleaning he sits on the front porch and whenever he sees me pass by the window he sits up and gives me a sad puppy dog face saying, why wouldn't you let me in too? He doesn't understand that dog hair doesn't help us in our cleaning.

The ranch has over a hundred horses. Six of them are pregnant and our due in April. I get to see foals being born!

Our first guests come on Valentine's Day. I'm excited. But for now I'm cleaning cabins through Thursday. And after that we ahve a bunch of orientation stuff and riding!

Anybody watch the Superbowl yesterday?!?!?!? The staff went up to the top of Coronary Hill to Tony and Brooke (Tony's wife/Becca's mother) House, a doublewide, and smashed all 25+ of us in for a superbowl party. That forth quarter was pretty sweet. I wonder what Tom Brady did that night.

It's past bedtime here. Actually everyone right now is up in the Roundup Room watching a cowboy movie, Open Range. It's just now ending. Don't watch it. It's awful. But it's funny because I'm on a ranch, watching a cowboy movie, surrounded by actual wranglers (Mike right now is trying to read over my shoulder. He says he's not a wrangler. He does maintenance. Oh but now Peter is chiming in saying he IS a wrangler. whatever.) in a room that's hardcore Western style decor and if I stuck my head out the West window I can guarantee you I'd get a whiff of manure. Yes! My favorite!