Life in Texas really doesn’t get much better than on a ranch. I have always envisioned long empty fields with plenty of cows, but Jordan ranch was beautiful, authentic, and showed plenty of signs of hard work. With 2,000 acres to work with, there is a lot that needs to be done!
My first morning on the ranch, we all went out on what I can only call a golf cart on steroids. We checked on some hog traps…apparently there are some wild hogs that come and tear up the ranch and trample on things. Unfortunately for them their lives were quickly coming to a close. Later that day, the guys shot the pigs and gave one to a friend to cook up and make goodies, and the others went into the lake for the alligators. Yeah. Alligators.
My favorite part of the ranch was the longhorns though. My breath was taken away when I saw these creatures in person! The massive size of their horns, these gentle giants have no idea how dangerous they are to humans! I was in awe.
I found the longhorns to be eerie as well. When you rolled up in the 4-wheeler, they just stared at you. Believe me, it’s a lot creepier than it sounds. To have 30 giant longhorns just staring you down at once…it’s scary. Bill helped me get this awesome video of the cows following us in the four wheeler one day. I sat in the back end, which was folded down with my legs hanging off…I quickly learned this was a poor decision, because I almost fell right out of the back! I felt like I was on a safari, it was so amazing!
Eventually, I tried to get as close as I possibly could without getting gored by a horn.
It was not an easy task…
Of course aside from purchasing awesome cowgirl boots, I wanted to ride a horse. I’ve been around horses my whole life, my best friend growing up had a horse that was walking distance from our houses and I used to volunteer at a horse thearapeutic riding center in my post-grad life so I was no stranger to them. I’ve made it a point to ride horses anywhere I travel (most recently in Turkey), so when Bill told me his aunt kept some horses on the ranch, I was ready to ride into the sunset!
Little did I know it was a little more than what this little cowgirl bargained for. Bill’s Aunt Joanne was a GENUINE cowgirl. Like she could probably spit into some kind of old fashioned metal milk jug and it would ricochet into a million directions. Does anyone know what I”m talking about? ANYWAY…one of the horses didn’t agree with me so I was put onto Sport. Who, despite his name, was supposedly the laziest horse of all.
This was a lie.
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