The perks of my job as a travel writer are many. Namely, I get to experience places that I might not normally visit on my own. Take, for example, my family’s recent stay at the incredibly family-friendly dude ranch, Elk Mountain Ranch, in the San Isabel National Forest in south-central Colorado. I’m not a horse person, and neither are my kids, so we wouldn’t naturally choose a dude ranch for our vacation (though we love the all-inclusive concept at Mexican resorts). But when the opportunity to visit one for a story assignment came up, I sure wasn’t going to turn it down!
We had an absolute ball — from learning how to ride (all of us but my husband, who grew up around horses) to enjoying nature in pristine spot in Colorado to indulging in some of the best family-style, home-cooked meals I’ve had in a long time.
But what really stood out at Elk Mountain Ranch is the genuine hospitality of its owners, Tom & Sue Murphy, and the wonderfully accommodating and friendly staff. (Here’s another perk of travel writing — meeting all sorts of fabulous people I wouldn’t otherwise meet!)
Owners Tom and Sue go out of their way to welcome guests to the ranch; it’s their home, too: their house is a stone’s throw from the comfortable main lodge. Both of them sit with guests at dinner every night, never tiring of answering questions about the ranch and their history there (they met as employees back in the mid-1980s!). Both of them work the ranch every day: Tom delivers a thorough “horse orientation” talk before the week’s first trail ride, detailing the finer points how to treat a new-to-you horse. He’s also out there teaching young children in the arena, helping to send older kids and adults off on their trail rides, cooking brunch over an open campfire, and playing “fat bat baseball” at more than 10,000 feet!
Hands-on Sue drives the van to remote lunch locations, so that children can meet their parents in the middle of a trail ride. She oversees the goings-on in the kitchen, as well as the children’s program. She took the time to help my daughter brush her favorite horse and get milk bottles so she could feed the baby goats. While we were there, Sue not only regularly played Uno with the kids in the main lodge before dinner was served, but she accompanied a children’s “field trip” to the Mt. Princeton Hot Springs Pool. Not one to sit on the sidelines, she was in the pool playing Marco Polo with the kids and giving them rides on the floaty noodles. She offered to keep an extra eyeball on my two children while I enjoyed a quiet, kid-free soak in the “extra hot” pool. If that’s not accommodating, I don’t know what is!
And the staff… the wranglers who led our trail rides (and drove the hayride tractor, and taught roping to the kids, and took a group fishing, and led a marksmanship tournament) were out-of-this-world polite, friendly and downright darling. (I love being called “ma’am.”) I cannot express my appreciation enough to Mike and Caleb who patiently led my trail rides. (How many times did Mike have to remind me how to guide Flint back on the trail?)
The young ladies who run the kitchen, wait tables and work the children’s program are also genuinely friendly and eager to get to know the guests. Always smiling and courteous, they go out of your way to make sure your every need is met (I think they are the speediest servers in the West). I sound positively ancient when I write this, but their parents did an outstanding job raising them!
Clearly, the owners and staff at Elk Mountain Ranch made my family’s stay incredibly pleasurable. But there are so many more reasons to consider a vacation here, from its wonderfully remote location in the mountains, to the comfortable lodging, to, once again, the amazing food. But the number-one reason I’d book a stay at the family-friendly Elk Mountain Ranch is its stellar customer service.
