afidel wrote:
Zion Ponderosa right outside the East entrance to Zion national park does the horses as well as ATVs, guided canyon hikes, paintball, fishing, shooting, rock climbing, etc. Not exactly a dude ranch but similar and a great experience. In addition to doing the activities onsite the wife and I took a day and went over to Bryce, hiked around and then did another horse ride with a company near the Bryce Canyon Country Rodeo.
They've got a small full hookup RV park onsite. When we stayed the sites were more expensive but it was all-inclusive, it looks like they've gone to an ala carte system with each activity being a separate fee. To my eyes it's not as good of a value but you can look at their site and make your own judgement.
My wife has a gnarly scar from when she rolled one of their ATVs. She's an expert dirt bike rider, but she'd never ridden an ATV before and it rolled on top of her. It looked like she had transmission fluid on her jeans, but I made our guide turn around and had her drop her pants. Turns out I could see her femur through the wound. Luckily the guide had a radio and was able to get us some help so we could carry her out of there to the ambulance.
It happened on a Sunday and the on-call doctor was at temple in Kanab when he got the page. He asked a few questions and then realized that the victim was a woman, so he declined to respond and went back to church instead.
So much for doing unto others.
The intern who stitched her up was pretty nervous and his sutures were horrible. 15+ years later and her leg looks like a shark bit her.
She's still a badass though. :B
EDIT: I just remembered that we still owe them a wastebasket. Even though she's a badass, she doesn't tolerate pain meds very well and she was still getting sick when we left Ponderosa. I figured we needed the waste basket worse than they did at the moment.
We stayed at Zion River Resort for a few days after that and I had to take her in to a clinic in Hurricane every day to have her drain advanced a little bit.
Memories.
