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| The Tanque Verde Ranch |
My BFF and I decided to celebrate our
birthdays by spending the weekend at the Tanque Verde Ranch in Tucson last
November, a fully self-sustaining environment where we would want for nothing. The kind of place you can check in and not
check out. To get to the ranch you have to take Speedway, voted the ugliest
street in American by Life magazine in the 1960’s. It hasn’t changed much, only
widened with age like many people. But if you drive to the very end of Speedway
heading east, you find this beautiful guest ranch. It smacks right up to the
Rincon Mountains; it has big desert skies featuring starry, starry nights with
no light pollution, mountains within an arm’s reach, rich expanses of lawn, a spa and tennis courts, bridal parties and a corral full of bridled parties. More on that
later.
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| The Entryway to our Casita |
Our casita was lovely and spacious
but had a king bed in one room and a sleeper sofa in the other room, which was
a hindrance to our sleep-over giggling parties. My friend called the first
night to ask housekeeping to make up the sleeper sofa and they obliged. But on
the second night when she asked for turn-down service she was turned down and
told by the front desk that they were “a working ranch.” And the work,
apparently, did not include accommodating such requests. Despite the obvious
abbreviation of the TV Ranch, there were no TV’s in the rooms. I guess we were
supposed to be enjoying nature unfettered by TV, but I have no trouble doing
both. There is a TV outside of the main dining room and on Sunday morning we
found it packed with men watching football. It was a Redskins bye-week, as luck would have
it, so I didn’t miss MY game.
The only thing that was slightly
off was the weather, it was cooold for Tucson—in the 50’s and low 60’s instead
of the expected 80’s. And our first scheduled activity, the Cowboy Cookout in
the Cottonwood Grove was bone chilling. We had to hover by the bonfires for warmth. After
loading up our plates, we could only find seating at the table covered with S’more
preparations. This was all right until little children started flailing around
with sharp steel sticks.
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| The Bridaled Parties |
“The
horse is an animal weighing over a half ton and with a mind of its own. Its
reactions are unpredictable. Even a small piece of paper or a sudden movement
of your arms, hat, etc. may cause a horse to shy spontaneously and
unpredictably”…from the TV Ranch Horseback Riding Rules. Note that “unpredictable” is mentioned twice.
My friend and I are both afraid of
horses but are interested in overcoming this. We felt that the 90 minute “Walking Ride,” would be just that, very
easy and gentle and flat. There were a couple of early warning signs to the
contrary. The wrangler asked a man in
our group how his wife was and we learned was that she was resting comfortably
in her room on Percocet. We chose not to pursue the story until after the ride.
But another red flag was raised during basic training when we were instructed
how to control the horse when it goes up and down hills. We didn’t want hills;
we wanted walking not climbing, no heights, thank you, and made that clear to
the wrangler. There were very rocky
paths, narrow trails, and steep downhill challenges, and while the surroundings
may have been beautiful, my primary focus was survival. My horse, whose name I
forget, I guess you could say we never bonded, did nothing offensive or scary.
But as the wrangler reported, I looked nervous and appeared to be gripping the
saddle horn for dear life. I could not turn around to look at my friend because
it would have taken the neck of the girl in the Exorcist to do so, so I ended
up resorting to hand signals. When the wrangler said we had 20 minutes left and
asked if we wanted to take another loop, I flung my arm out in the “cut” symbol,
and my friend got it and spoke up and said no, no thank you, we have had
enough, we are happy to forgo the rest of the ride. And then it happened when we were returning to
the corral—a rider in front of us got off of Goose, a huge Triple X-sized
horse, who ran wild the minute he was free of a rider, whooshing past my friend
in a terrifying fashion. I guess we
weren’t the only animals thrilled to be finished.
On land we were brave enough to ask
what had happened to the other rider’s wife and learned that she had broken her
arm yesterday at this very juncture when the horses were overcome with excitement.
She had gotten bucked off. I was
confused by the wrangler’s rather casual inquiry about the injured woman, but
later read this section of the horseback rules in all caps: “ALL GUESTS RIDING AT TANQUE VERDE RANCH DO
SO AT THEIR OWN RISK AND UNDER THE KNOWLEDTE (SIC) THAT AN ARIZONA EQUINE
LIABILITY STATUTE APPLIES TO THEIR HORSEBACK RIDING ACTIVITIES WHILE AT TANQUE
VERDE GUEST RANCH.” Ah yes, what’s a
broken arm when you’re covered by the “Arizona Equine Liability Statute?”
As Eleanor Roosevelt says: “Do something every day that scares you.” Make
that every few years for us.
Back to the feed bag (dining hall)
for lunch and then the antidote to the ride—The "Off the Trail" 80
minute massage which was just perfect, and cancelled out all of the equestrian
induced tension. We headed to the Doghouse Saloon for happy hour, equipped with an
iPad so we could do a “dead or alive” check on some of the people we knew when
we lived and worked together in Tucson.
Another fine dinner and sweet
sleepover and it was time to bid adieu to the ranch reunion weekend. At the airport I was comforted to see the
soothing glow of several televisions, and was relieved to know my ride home
would have wings instead of hooves.
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