When my daughter indigo was 5 years old, I took her to the pediatrician. I was losing sleep because she seemed overly fearful—most recently, she'd hyperventilated at the top of a 10-foot playground slide. The doctor told me to keep trying to gently challenge her. If she cried on skis, he said, try something else ... like horseback riding. I liked that suggestion, since my husband and I both grew up riding. That year Indigo took her first riding lesson, and that summer we began our search for the perfect dude ranch.
Indigo, now 11, has grown out of her apprehension, partly thanks to the confidence handling horses has given her; my other daughter, Sofia, 9, has always been fearless. Together, we have all become hooked on dude ranches: the epic landscapes, the sense of adventure, the easy friendships. Our girls fall so in love with their horses that they stop begging us for a pony for a whole week.
Granted, not every dude ranch has been an overwhelming success—some have been dull, and some have incongruously felt more Four Seasons than Wild West. But last summer, we discovered the genuine article at Eatons' Ranch in northeastern Wyoming. The oldest dude-ranching family in America, the Eatons actually coined the term dude; it implies "paying easterner," the clientele that founder Howard Eaton attracted when he opened his first ranch in North Dakota in the 1890s. The current, larger ranch, at the foot of the Big Horn Mountains in Wolf, Wyoming, was purchased by Eaton and his two brothers in 1904. Five generations and 105 years later, these 7,000 acres are still owned and operated by Eatons.
My daughters and I arrived late one August afternoon (this was our inaugural mother-daughter trip; my husband couldn't join us). The sun was starting to sink behind the meadows and the fir-studded mountains in the distance. We felt like we were deep in the heart of cowboy country.
Aside from the landscape, you wouldn't exactly call Eatons' luxurious. The white clapboard main house and most of the log guest cabins were built a century ago. We stayed in Wigwam, a two-bedroom cabin overlooking Wolf Creek that was built circa 1909. The beds were twin and the bathroom was clean but basic. It felt authentic and charming in its own way.
The truly exceptional thing about Eatons' is that it allows you to ride on your own. It's one of the last dude ranches to do so. A guide accompanies you on your first ride, and then, if you're up for it, you're given a map and set free. (Wyoming has enacted equine limited-liability laws, which assume that anyone who mounts a horse must surely be aware of the inherent risk.)
Eatons' is also an excellent destination for inexperienced riders. The wranglers give free lessons, and the place is so confident of its horses that any child age 6 or older can go out on the trails. "We've never had a serious injury," says Jeff Way, the general manager and one of the founders' great-great-grandsons. "Mainly because our horses are bombproof."
On our first morning, the girls and I filled in our ability-level cards and were fitted with mounts. Indigo, no longer a chicken, wrote in the margin, "Request horse that will lope when asked." I was seriously concerned about my ability to negotiate the 7,000 acres plus the additional 1.1 million abutting acres of Bighorn National Forest, so we stuck with a wrangler the whole time—a young man named Johnson Wooten who, like everyone at the ranch, was exceedingly polite. He didn't talk much, but when he did, it was to point out some creature or patch of wildflowers we would have missed otherwise.
For the next four days, we rode twice a day, three hours in the morning and three in the afternoon. We loped through meadows and ponderosa-pine forests, and wound down rocky canyons, Indigo and Sofia hooting and teasing each other behind me. Every few minutes I'd look back at my girls, so comfortable in nature, so proud in their ability to handle their bombproof horses. Their small bodies sat alert and in charge. They couldn't stop grinning.
When they weren't riding, they and the other guests' children—strangers a few days before—formed a posse. During the days, bronze-shouldered and barefoot, they played Ping-Pong, learned to lasso, and cannonballed into the pool. At night they sought one another out across the big communal dining hall. (The building is also a social hub for parents, hosting live music and cocktail parties during the summer.)
Aside from the occasional High School Musical T-shirt, a typical day at the ranch today probably doesn't look much different from one there 50 years ago. Even the families are the same—many have been coming for decades. We met one great-grandmother who had spent almost every one of her 81 summers at Eatons'.
Late one day, I left the girls with the posse (babysitting is available, but there's always someone unofficially looking out for the kids) and hiked up Wolf Creek Canyon. As all parents know, any alone time is a religious experience, but this afternoon felt particularly so. As I climbed down to the creek, I realized it was just me, the grasshoppers, and the water—nothing man-made in sight. Now I couldn't stop grinning.
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