Go West, young man. Simple advice that surely you have heard referenced in pop culture. The Horace Greeley quote spoke to me largely because of my fathers experiences out West at my age. He had hitch hiked cross country to California (twice) in his early twenties and had always raised me to appreciate the simplistic beauty of the environment around me. We shared a love of hiking, a passion for the outdoors, and a wanderlust desire to travel. We had spend a great many days hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire while growing up in Woodstock, CT. The travel bug was planted at some point during our various excursions, and I decided my post graduate plans had to involve going West. While my friends were applying to various grad school programs, I was trying my luck with odd jobs around the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and Yellowstone.  My research and applications took me to a guest ranch in Emigrant, Montana of all places. Situated just outside of Yellowstone National Park, finding the ranch was a tremendous stroke of luck or a sign that fate does in fact exist. It was everything and more I could have ever imagined it to be, and these photo’s below just share a tiny bit of the ranch life I had experienced. There is something called Mountain Sky Magic at the ranch, and it can’t fully be described. It must be experienced. Here is my best shot at sharing some of that magic with you:

One of our many Saturday afternoon themed splashball shifts

Our Grease themed splashball team. Each Saturday we would have a different theme