A few months ago when Nate and I went out to Colorado, my family took us to The Flying W Ranch for my birthday. The Flying W Ranch is an actual working mountain cattle ranch located in the foothills of Colorado Springs, but the really cool thing about the Flying W is that they serve chuckwagon dinners while the Flying W Wranglers sing and tell jokes. The Ranch also has a mountain village that you can explore before you sit down to eat and be entertained. Most of the buildings are shops where you can buy cowboy gear - like this really nifty hat.
Last time I went to the Flying W, Paige, Nicole, and I had a really great time riding the tiny train, and Paige told us to ride the train for her when we went. Unfortunately that plan was foiled.
After looking around the village we sat down in the big outdoor picnic area to eat our dinner.
Then we filed into the ranch house to hand over our tickets in exchange for a chuckwagon dinner.
The great thing about the Flying W is that everyone gets the exact same dinner. Beef or chicken, baked beans, baked potato, biscuits, and applesauce. The food is served on a tin plate and the Wranglers remind you to get your cold applesauce so that you can hold onto that hot plate.
After everyone got their food, the Flying W Wranglers took the stage to sing all their cowboy songs and tell their cowboy jokes. Taggart and I were especially happy to hear "I'm my own Grandpa." When we were kids, we had that song on a Flying W Wrangler tape, and we listened to the tape so much that it eventually broke. We loved the Wranglers so much that we bought their CD and listened to it on our way back to Kansas.
If you drive for 30-40 minutes away from civilization, you truly feel like you live in the middle of the country here. Fall really is the best time of year. Here JoLee is getting psyched for the corn maze.
The corn maze was divided into two halves: one side for KU and the other for MU. Here I am looking like a dork.
JoLee thought it would be best if she explained to me how corn grows. It's an amazing plant really. Besides being useful for labyrinths, you can eat it and make gasoline from it.
Here we are racing through the maze that takes several hours to complete. The goal is to hit all 24 check points. We only got 14 before running out of time.
Each check point had a hole punch and a map. Face it, there was no way we were going to get to all of the check points without closely following a map.
The corn maze was great, despite getting lost a few times. We were a little disappointed that there were no prizes for getting 14/24 hole punches.
