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A Week at the Ranch in Video
Enjoy this amazing video shared and created by guest JD Blackburn, in honor of our 25th anniversary.
What if I Don’t Ride at a Colorado Dude Ranch?
Many folks ask “What if I don’t ride but my family wants to go to a dude ranch?” Here at our dude ranch in southern Colorado we often have guests who don’t choose to ride. Sometimes they can’t for physical reasons, sometimes they just prefer not to, but either way they still have a wonderful […]
Colorado Dude Ranch: Five Ways to Choose a Guest Ranch for Your Family Vacation
A Colorado dude ranch is a great way to get your family outdoors, hopefully far away away from technology and enjoying some spectacular scenery from the back of a horse. But choosing a guest ranch can be a challenge, especially when each ranch looks more perfect than the last. Here are five ways to help […]
Rocky Mountain Adventures on our Colorado Dude Ranch
Here in the southern Colorado Rockies we’ve been closed for the dude ranch season for just over a month. In that time we’ve shut down the grand old Lodge and all the cabins, said goodbye to our great staff, remodeled the last two cabins that needed living areas and fireplaces, pulled shoes and trimmed feet on the […]
Colorado Dude Ranch Finds Success with Hydroponic Hay
With 130 horses at our southern Colorado dude ranch, you can imagine we go through alot of hay since the terrain here is spectacular, but not conducive to enough grazing to support that many. So our hay bills run high and we are always on the lookout for creative ways to care for our herd. […]
The Wonderful Life of a Dude Rancher
We live a very wonderful life here on our Colorado dude ranch, the Rainbow Trout Ranch. We’ve been doing it for twenty-one years, although my husband David and I worked on other ranches for a few years before his parents and he decided to make a full fledged dude ranch out of what used to […]
September 2014 Here we come
I haven’t made any blog entries for a while as my next trip to paradise (aka Rainbow Trout Ranch) seemed so far away, but now that we have the flights all booked up for next fall (my American is improving, I remembered not to say ‘autumn’) it seems closer. Yes, September 2014, Here we come! […]
Top 10 Reasons to go to a Colorado Dude Ranch, not on a Cruise!
Given the recent news stories about cruises, we decided to add our two cents as to why a Colorado dude ranch, like Rainbow Trout Ranch, is a much better choice for your vacation than a cruise… 10. We don’t ever need to wait for tugboats! 9. We don’t have sewer issues that you have to […]
Dude Ranch “Super” Marketing
Like most dude ranchers, I think about marketing at our Colorado guest ranch. A lot. Between all the blogging, face booking, tweeting, pinning—or is it pinteresting?!—posting, meta tags, YouTube videos, keywords and goodness knows what else, my mind is a jumble of noise, rather like a casino when you first walk in. With the recent […]
Zorro: The Southern Colorado Dude Ranch Legend
THE STORY OF ZORRO: A RAINBOW TROUT RANCH LEGEND ABOUT A HORSE WHO WENT WALKABOUT We operate a beautiful dude ranch set in a picturesque river valley here in the San Juan Mountains range of the southern Colorado Rockies. When we stand in the shade of the massive porch that hugs the lodge, we look […]
A Very Special Dude Ranch Horse Story: Mikey
The true heart and soul of our Colorado dude ranch lies with the horses. Without horses, a dude ranch is just another place to stay, albeit a pretty one, and although we do have awesome fishing, a fish doesn’t seem to inspire the same love that a horse does, although some of our staunch fly-fishermen […]
Riding Western in the UK – getting ready for our Colorado dude ranch visit
I am planning a family reunion for a big birthday in 2016, and where else would I want to be but Rainbow Trout Ranch! So we already thinking about it. Two of my four girls have been dude ranching before, but the other two haven’t. Two of their husbands have never even sat on a […]
Summer Season 2012 Wrap-Up
2012 Rocked! It was an awesome season here at the ranch. Scroll down for some pictures and memories.
At Rainbow Trout Ranch at last
Having made it to the ranch at last, I thought I would share just one day of my two weeks in paradise at Rainbow Trout Ranch. On this particular day, I woke to hear the welcome sound of footsteps on my balcony, heralding the arrival of hot coffee! As I crept out of my cosy […]
Season’s End at Rainbow Trout Ranch, High in Southern Colorado
A week ago, I took an all-day ride to the back-country high above and behind our Colorado dude ranch. It was a simply glorious day to be riding good horses in spectacular country. We came back, seventeen miles and packed-lunches later, tired, sore but on a truly natural high fostered by the sheer beauty around us. […]
83 days to go until I arrive at Rainbow Trout, my Colorado Dude Ranch
My trip is getting closer! My last blog was about ways to get to the ranch, so what have we decided to do this year? We are flying into Denver on September 4th, but we don’t get to the ranch until Sunday the 9th, so we have a few days with which to play. […]
Spring at this Colorado Dude Ranch: Getting Ready for Guests
It is so exciting at our Colorado dude ranch located in the southern Rockies when the staff start arriving for the new season. We have a guest capacity of around sixty at our all-inclusive family vacation ranch, and thus we need a staff of around thirty, plus the four of us. This year we are […]
Getting to the Ranch…
I’m pleased to say I am typing this with two hands again as the wrist is on the mend. Only one more week in this horrid splint. Horray! Although we have had our flights to the ranch booked for months, there is still plenty to think about in terms of a route. If you look […]
The Horse We Shared at the Colorado Dude Ranch
A TRIBUTE TO CD, The Horse We Shared By Andrea Hansell Our family first came to Rainbow Trout Ranch in July of 1997. Before we arrived, I spent a good deal of time discussing horse choices with Jane on the phone. I had enough riding experience to want a horse with some spunk, but […]
More Getting Ready for My Colorado Dude Ranch Holiday
The jeans have arrived! Thank you e-bay! They came straight to my front door with no nasty UPS man demanding a small fortune before he would hand them over. The site is http://stores.ebay.co.uk/peachstatewholesale, and the Q-Baby Ultimate riding jeans were $27.99. The tag said $59.99. The postage was $19.25, but I paid more than that […]
My Favorite Colorado Dude Ranch Horse and More
Well , it is 1pm here in sunny England. It is an extraordinary 23 degrees here (now that is not freezing point, as in Fahrenheit it is nearly 75 degrees and very warm), but am I outside enjoying this mad March weather? Am I heck! I am chained to my desk as usual, transcribing interviews. […]
Blog of an RTR Guest
My name is Frances, and I have been lucky enough to visit RTR three times (2007/9/10), and I am very excited about my next visit in September this year. I am even more excited about 2016 when I am planning to bring my whole family to celebrate a BIG birthday. I won’t tell you which […]
Teens at the Dude Ranch: The Transformation from Surly to Happy
Dude Ranching for us is primarily about families. And while we do have a wonderful “Adults Only” time in September, the three main months of the summer are primarily families who come to share an all-inclusive, adventure vacation with our family. We do have couples and groups and we love them. But the backbone of […]
Dude Ranch Dogs
While most people think of horses when they hear the term “dude ranch,” many ranches, like ours here in the southern Colorado Rockies, are also about the dogs. Just a bit of background on us here at Rainbow Trout Ranch: we are a long-time dude ranch dating back to the 1920’s although we are […]
The Changing Times
For those of you who are new to Rainbow Trout Ranch, we are a Colorado dude ranch located in the southern Colorado Rocky Mountains. We offer a full program of riding, fishing, kids’ programs, teen program and so much more in the summer months and a month of “adults only” time in September. It is […]
Dream Trip to our Colorado Dude Ranch Inspired an Article
One of our Colorado dude ranch guests wrote a great article about her experience at Rainbow Trout Ranch in Mommy Magazine of Sarasota, Florida. Dream Trips Save and Plan Your Way to Nirvana by Kerri Dieffenwierth I guess it’s true: Some of us have always had wanderlust. Instead of posters of Leif Garrett, Michael Jackson […]
Pagosa.com article on Rainbow Trout Ranch
Pagosa.com recently posted the following article on Rainbow Trout Ranch: Experience the True West at this Colorado Dude Ranch Living in Colorado the past 7 years, we thought we had been living the Western lifestyle. However, after spending a wonderful week at Rainbow Trout Ranch, a Colorado dude ranch in nearby Antonito, Colorado, we discovered […]
Teen Program at Rainbow Trout Ranch
When we first came to the ranch, all that ran through my mind was: “I hope this week goes by fast.” But by the time we got to the lodge, that thought was changed into “This is gonna be fun!” From the first time I caught a hummingbird to the time I first loped, I never wanted to go. […]
Peanut Butter Jelly Time!
The Peanut Butter Jelly Ride is a great event here at Rainbow Trout Ranch. This ride is the all day horseback ride for the cowpokes, who are ages 6-11. When the clock strikes 10am, I hear the eager voices of the children running down the mountain from the lodge to the stables. As the cowpoke […]
Colorado dude ranch ride coming in
A fun picture of a ride coming in, taken last week. That is wrangler Dave on the paint, guest Susan, guest Joe, wrangler Luke, and guest Deborah on the right holding her hat in the wind–it was pretty windy last week but very beautiful. Note how many of the aspens weren’t budded then–they are all […]
A Guest of the West
Antonito, CO. – Where the mountains meet the desert at the Colorado-New Mexico state line, the Conejos River winds its way through a tranquil valley 9,000 feet high in the Rockies. Guarded by towering peaks and dramatic waterfalls, the beauty of this place is matched only by its remarkable stillness. Here, for a week you […]
Rocky Mountain High
One Week At A Colorado Dude Ranch Is The Travel Bonanza Of The Year By Candi Pillitterri There’s a reason somebody made a song about springtime in the Rockies; this is the kind of place people get silly and rhapsodic about approximately five seconds after they arrive. And if you’re lucky enough to get to […]
Spring is coming to the ranch
Spring has sprung! Even though we’ve had close to a foot of snow these last few days, there is a definite feel of summer coming in the air. The river is starting to open up–it is frozen solid all winter–and the aspens are budding. That gorgeous blue Colorado sky is spectacular as always and I […]
