Way Out West - Canyon Creek Ranch

Way Out West Entertainment is our friend. Actually Canyon Creek Ranch is our best friend. I found an article in the paper on Sunday, August 1st. It tells about an opportunity to get a free sunrise or sundown horseback ride. They are offering free Friday rides to the first 24 people who call in on Monday mornings from now through September 30th. That is pretty generous of them. They not only give you a free horseback ride but they feed you too. You will either get a continental breakfast or a barbecue depending on which ride you want.

I didn't really care which ride we got as long as it was free. They list the value of this experience as $90 - we definitely wouldn't be going if we had to pay our own way. Well I called Canyon Creek Ranch the next morning and they had already given away the 24 freebies. But she gave me some instructions about how they did things - we start at 7:30 am, don't bother leaving a message - we won't call back, we will immediately answer the incoming call as soon as we hang up with the previous call, etc. - and wished me luck on getting a free ride in the coming weeks.

So this past Monday, I enlisted some phone calling help at 7:30 am. I made a general "get your lazy buns out of bed and help me" statement in the hall outside of the boys rooms. And who stumbled out of bed to help? Scott - I can always count on him. Anyway, we started dialing Canyon Creek Ranch. And dialing. And dialing. Scott began to question how long we would continue. I told him for at least 10 minutes. That is the amount of time it took them to give away the free rides on the first week. So we continued on. I started loving my phone's redial feature!

Do any of you remember the olden days when you tried to call in to a radio station for some really cool prize and you had to hand dial the number every time? We used to dial like lightning. I wonder how many wrong numbers were dialed by the masses back then?

Back to the present. It had been nearly 10 minutes and we were getting either their very pleasant answering machine message, a weird ring with a sort of echo at the end, or a busy signal. But when I pushed redial for the umteenth time I got a ring tone that sounded more "real". No funny echo. Hmmmm. I told Scott I thought I might have something. And sure enough after just a few rings I had a real lady answer the line. I got to schedule 2 free rides, one for me and one for Doug. Guess when we are going? Tomorrow morning we are going to Canyon Creek Ranch for the sunrise ride and the continental breakfast.

We are both pretty excited. The facility is out in Black Canyon City. We have to be there no later than 6:45. Hey, the sun is already up by then! Oh well, you can't complain about free. Anyway, we will get dressed in our best cowboy attire (we don't really have any of that - but we won't be wearing flip flops and shorts) and enjoy the experience.

If any of you can think of any good cowboy names or nicnames that would be good for us - put them in a comment. We will take all of them into consideration and when we post real pictures of ourselves on the horses - we will use the best ones to label our pictures. Good luck on that one.