Is the last roundup near for Hidden Valley Ranch?
It's just an hour and a half from Seattle, but as Hidden Valley Ranch's owners say, "2.2 miles — and a hundred years" off a main road.
Now the question is — is there a place in this day and age for a mom-and-pop guest ranch?
A place where the rooms have no mini-bars, but the cookhouse door is always open, so guests can help themselves to pitchers of iced tea and lemonade and a cookie jar full of delicious homebaked treats.
A place where cellphones don't work (if you really must communicate with the outside world, there's one pay phone in the cookhouse, beneath the elk horns), and the cabin doors have no locks.
A place where entertainment means Willie Nelson playing softly in the background as guests, eating together at long tables family-style, chow down on gourmet-i-fied cowpoke fare, and owner Kim Coe, in well-worn jeans and T-shirt, stops by each to chat.
A place where your to-do list will be short:
Swing in hammock. Walk down to creek. Sit in shade of cottonwoods. Ride chuckwagon to enormous breakfast. Read. Listen for ringing triangle signaling time to eat lunch. Swim. Listen for ringing triangle signaling time for dinner. Take long trail ride. Soak sore muscles in hot tub, looking up at spectacularly starry sky. Make wish on shooting star.
(Or if you're a kid, maybe add these: Run back and forth from pool to recreation lounge to play pingpong or foosball or plunk piano; visit goats and chickens.)
As 16-year-old Becky Otten of Kirkland says, while visiting for her eighth summer despite a broken arm and doctor's orders not to ride horses (ssh — she disobeyed): "It's nice and open, and really pretty. There's not much to do — but here I don't mind. Just relax."
And those were our sentiments when this summer my friend Madeline and I visited with our 11-year-old sons, best buds Ben and Tao. They could safely run wild, savoring their freedom; we could unwind.
Problem is, the ranch isn't attracting enough like-minded customers. As a small operation — with room for just 40 guests — its costs are high. Like most guest ranches, it charges a substantial per person rate ($335 for two nights for adults, including meals and horseback riding, discounted for kids, less for longer stays, with a 15 percent gratuity added to the bill). The ranch is also open to those who come just for a horseback ride or a meal.
Still, the ranch is losing money.
Summers are busy but they run below capacity in spring and autumn, though those are lovely times. The economy, perhaps, has taken a toll; 75 percent of the clientele is from greater Puget Sound, though recent guests have come from, to pick a sample, Chile, Iowa, Pennsylvania and West Africa.
Bruce Coe took a day job, as a Kittitas County commissioner, to cover costs. Still, it hasn't been enough.
They have no plans to sell; "this is our home" (and they've donated development rights of the valleys north of the ranch to the Cascade Land Conservancy, so they'll never be anything but agricultural or recreational land).
But Kim Coe says she needs a year to think things through. She'll take her son and daughter, 16 and 14, traveling. She has homeschooled them ever since she and Bruce took over the ranch, after returning from Los Angeles where he'd been pursuing a dream to be a rock musician (now he plays old-time country). "It's been a good lifestyle," she says. Now it's time for her son to be with kids his own age, maybe go to boarding school. It's a time of transition for them all.
Still, she says, "I don't want to be the one to close the ranch." Bruce's family bought it from Hollywood cowboy Tom Whited and his wife, Nita, in 1967. "There's got to be a way," she says. "It's a unique spot, a beautiful place."
Of that, there is no doubt.
Only nine miles from Cle Elum, you don't see it until you're right there. As you make a final turn up and over a hillside on a rough gravel road, suddenly it's as if you've stumbled upon — well, a hidden valley.
Nestled in forested foothills of the Wenatchee Mountains and overseen by Lookout Mountain, the ranch is perched on a ridge above the green and gold meadows of a valley watered by the Swauk Creek.
The guest buildings spread out over lush lawn, including the small pool, a sports court, corral, wood-and-cinderblock bunkhouses, historic log cabins the Whiteds skidded onto the site in '47. The cookhouse is the old 1878 homestead.
Western memorabilia is artfully about: flower-filled wooden carts, wagon wheels, bridles and chaps, potbellied stoves and the like.
When we visited in late July, there was no evidence that closing was in the offing; service was gracious and upbeat. Here are some of the highlights of what we found:
The guests
We took advantage of the midweek special for kids; the place was filled, and everyone else had kids, too. (Couples dominate in spring and autumn, I was told later).
Kids were happy, and that made families happy.
Diane David, husband John and daughters Nicole, 10, and twins Gabby and Julia, 7, were visiting from Santa Cruz, Calif. — on their third ranch vacation, the first here. "Some time we'll go to Paris, just the two of us," Diane David said. "But for now, with the girls, ranch vacations work for us." All their ranch vacations have been booked, sight unseen, from ranchweb.com. First was Aspen Ridge Resort, in Ely, Ore.: "Working cattle ranch, in the middle of nowhere," describes Diane. "I rode alongside while wranglers lassoed and gave the cattle medicine."
Next they tried Green Horn Creek Ranch Resort in Quincy, Calif., near Reno. "Beautiful, expensive. The workers ate and danced with you. The food wasn't as good as here.
"This place is somewhere in between."
Most of the guests I talked to thought they got their money's worth.
Judith Brainerd of Olympia, there with husband Rob and daughter Kate, 6, was irked by a few things: "The 15 percent gratuity right off the bat was offputting"; she yearned for air conditioning. But she conceded Kate was in heaven, and praised the service. "It's a great place for kids and families."
The food
To a one, guests cited the food as a big plus: traditional with an updated twist, and plentiful.
Dinner starts with homemade bread and a varied salad bar, and there were two good choices for entrees: one night, salmon with a kicky wasabi sauce or pork loin with sesame ginger; another night, chicken with capers, herbs and olives, or a flavorful beef burgundy. Picky kids have alternatives such as homemade pizza (Ben and Tao gave that, and the mac and cheese, high marks). Dessert one night was a rich chocolate mousse; another night, a thick-crusted just-sweet-enough apple crisp with vanilla ice cream.
The chuckwagon breakfast, rustled up on an old-fashioned Army stove in the woods, is ample and traditional: biscuits and country gravy, sausages, bacon, eggs, blueberry pancakes, juice, coffee, fresh fruit salad.
The cabins
Because you pay per person, no cabin is more or less expensive, though some are nicer; first come, first served. The log cabins have not been restored but "made livable; rewired, replumbed, new foundations." All have Old West touches — patchwork quilts, log beam bedsteads branded HR, metal sculptures of horses.
While one of our cabins was quaint, with a twig-fence porch overlooking the valley, the other, in the cinderblock bunkhouse, while more spacious and with a refrigerator, felt utilitarian, and the aqua paint was jarring.
The horses
Packages come with discounted trail rides; extended rides and lessons are also available. The trails traverse varied, pretty country (the ranch sits on 300 acres).
As novice riders, we found some of the horses required steady prodding to keep going (and to stop eating). We were a bit nervous, because that morning a woman fell off her horse because the saddle wasn't on tight enough; she hadn't worn a helmet (offered, but you can sign a waiver and refuse) and had a huge bump on her head.
Evenings are supposed to be the best time to see wildlife, though we didn't see much. The wrangler commented that the previous evening a rattlesnake blocked the trail; I was happy to avoid that particular wildlife.
Naturally, none of this fazed our kids, who declared the horses the very best thing about the ranch stay they'd enjoyed in every way.
Carey Quan Gelernter: cgelernter@seattletimes.com
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