RVing to The Great American Horse Drive! // A Horse Themed Weekend in Dinosaur & Maybell CO

Hey good morning, good day, wherever you are watching this, whenever you're watching this. We are in Dinosaur, Colorado. Just woke up in the Welcome Center here. There's a tiny little diner next door and we're gonna go order some delicious small-town diner breakfast, our favorite kind. The town is really small. There's maybe 300 people or so in the last census, 2020. Not a lot of business in here. The town actually has a really cool, really cool history. It was like the early 30s or so. Oil boom brought brought people in and then with oil it ebbs and flows and so the town's kind of had a lot of people leave. And it actually was renamed to Dinosaur to take advantage of the fact that Dinosaur National Monument is just a short little drive away. So the town reinvented itself around the dinosaur identity, which we're gonna check out a little bit later. Not today because Lindsey's got horse racing to watch today, but we're gonna check it out tomorrow. We're gonna go do all of our dinosaur exploring, but right now we're gonna go eat some breakfast. Yum. The food is cooking. French toast with a side of bacon. Well, we just made a mistake. Why are you laughing? Because I know what you're talking about. Yeah, we just went into the Visitor Center here. Yeah. And the guy there is really nice. We never go into Visitor Centers because it's usually just brochures about all the ways to spend money on things that we don't usually spend money on. Right, but this guy that works there was super informative. His name is David. And then told us that tomorrow is the, I don't even know what you call it, they basically run the horses through Maybell. Which is about 50 minutes away. In the wrong direction. Well, in the opposite direction where we were gonna go. But you just heard Lindsey say horse and when she says run the horses there's about 700 horses they bring right through the center of town. We camped here a couple years ago. We went out and saw the wild horses. So these aren't wild horses but it's in the same area. But it's an annual thing and they haven't done it in two years because of COVID. And we just happen to be right in the area. So I mean what do you do, right? There's a county park. We parked there, it was four years ago, three years ago. Four years. Four years ago and it's right in the middle of town. So if we can get there tonight after Lindsey gets done with all of her horse racing today. If we can get a spot there tonight it'll be magical because we'll wake up and then horse filled weekend. You're just gonna hear click, click, click, click, click, click, times 700, 700 horses times four clicks per horse. That's a lot of click clicks running through the streets. So we think we're gonna do that and then we think we're gonna do dinosaurs still. Because it's on the way out. Well it's not. We'll have to backtrack. But, but I mean anytime Lindsey can get horses we try to do horses. And you know that if you've been following us long enough. You're just joining us. Lindsey is horse obsessed and I gave her the option either you can have a horse or you can live in this RV. And it was very tough. She had to actually put down her horse to buy this RV. No, don't say that. No. Stitch got donated to the children's ranch. Lindsey had a horse before we started this life and she donated to the boys ranch. Boys and Girls Ranch where we lived and worked and raised eight kids at a time. 24 in a two-year period. And so yeah that's as close to owning a horse as you'll ever be. In the past. You're saying it'll never happen again? Yeah. You can't fit a horse in here. We can barely fit two of us. You can pull a horse trailer. Okay. People do it. So the visitor center was awesome. David helped us out. He's amazing. Got so much like I'd want to spend two weeks here now based on the information he told us. He told us so many cool places to go. Good drives, good hikes, good things to see that people don't know to see. And that's why you stop in Visitor Center. I might start stopping in Visitor Center more often. Yeah. I just don't know if we're gonna get more Davids because. Yeah I know. He was like you look like you don't travel on the beaten path that much. Like let me show you some of these really cool places off the beaten path. So long story short. I made a mistake. Plans just changed. And I just routed us out this morning. I was like all right I got it all figured out. Calculated the gas we're gonna spend getting from one place to the next. And then that all just changed. Called to wander not called to arrive. That's how it goes. And Lindsay's got some horse race watching to do. Horse watching race. Horse race watching. She's gonna watch some horse races. I'm gonna get back to work. What's going on? It's Kentucky Derby Day. It's a post parade. The horses are warming up and getting ready to go in the gate. With Cyan. Who's gonna win? No idea. It is wide open this year. But Holly, the best horse in the race. I think is Epicenter. Most talented horse. I think is Teva. But he's super lightly raced. And I don't know. The track's been playing. It's been, closers have been won in today. I think there's only one horse that won on the lead and that was in a sprint. So I don't know. I think a mid pack horse is gonna win. We'll see. Zanon's another good horse. Wide open. There's no clear favorite this year. 21. Wait, 20. 20 was scratched and they don't, they don't put them in that same slot. They also, they have one long gate now. They used to have two gates. It's more fair. He's a long shot. Zanon got, no, Zanon got pushed back. Messier. Teva's outside. Teva's in a good spot. But he's still with his head up. Merlin. UAE horse. He's from Dubai. Is that Smile Happy is another 7? No, who's second? Messier. Smile Happy's right there. 45 for a half mile. It's gonna be a closer. It's fast. That's really fast. That's, yeah. It's gonna be a closer. None of Epicenter can run off the pace. Wow. Where is he? Crown Pride, the Japan horse. Wow. He's running a huge race. Holy moly. Messier's got the lead. Epicenter. Look at that. Oh my gosh. That's so cool. Zanon's running him down on the outside. It's gonna be head to head. Look at this. Wow. Oh my gosh. Hold on, Zanon, hold on. No! Japanese one. What? Wow. Who was that? That was Rick Strike. That was Rick Strike, the freaking longest shot on the board. The last one. The last one. He got in because Lucas scratched. You gotta be freaking kidding me. Somebody made a lot of money. Oh my gosh. Another huge long shot. That was like, um... Gosh, what's the horse that was 50-1? 202. Wow. What? That is insane. He ran down the two best horses in the field. He's only won a maiden race. 80-1. That's insane. Holy cow. I told you it was gonna be a closer. Mind that bird. It was 50-1. He was the last huge long shot, and he ran up the rail. Just like that. Wow. He won't pay triple crown this year. No. Oh no. He won't. He won't do anything. I mean, I hate to say that. But it was set up perfectly for him. Freaking jockey's never run in the derby. This jockey's never ridden. He's like the youngest jockey. And he just runs the derby. On an 80-1. They weren't gonna enter. Well, now that the Kentucky Derby is done, and that was fun. That was exciting. Always great when an 80-1 long shot wins. We're gonna go do our 80-1 long shot drive to Maybell. Yeah. Maybell. Got our camp spot all set up, and hopefully when we get there, nobody's in our spot. We're gonna go check it out. It's just an hour drive or so to get there. And then we're set up, and we'll keep in the horse theme. I thought we were gonna have a dinosaur theme in Dinosaur. And it's turned into a horse theme. From being here to watch horse racing, where we had the ability to watch it using our T-Mobile, what's it called? T-Mobile Home Internet. Yeah, we have that. Yeah, perfect. No problem. Even though we're not in our home. I mean, we are in our home. But it's worked well. We'll have a video on that, and we'll tell you more about that. But it's been awesome to take with us here in the United States since we've come back from Baja. Awesome internet pretty much everywhere we've gone. Definitely everywhere we've gone we've had T-Mobile service, which has been a lot of places. So, now we're gonna head to Maybell, and we're gonna go see some horses tomorrow. Which I'm actually kind of excited about. 700's a big number. That's more people. There's more horses in that town than there are people. Yeah, that's crazy. That's Colorado for you. That's northwestern Colorado for you. Alright, we're gonna hit the road. After a short little drive where we saw raindrops on the windshield, we haven't seen rain in over nine months since we left Florida, so it's been crazy. But we got here. It's cold. It's rainy. The dogs are excited about being outside. The drive was absolutely beautiful. It's only about 50 minutes from Dinosaur. And we're gonna be backtracking later on. So maybe we'll get to see that drive again. But it's absolutely stunning. Beautiful. Everything's green right now. They got a lot of snow this winter. But everything's green. The mountains are more hilly. Easy to drive through. But absolutely beautiful. And this town is a small town. Tiny little one-room post office. A modular for a library. A one-room schoolhouse. But we're here at the city park. They're getting ready to have the big deal tomorrow. They got the inflatables for the kids to play on. They got bleachers for everybody to sit on. And we're bringing the horses right down the middle of the street. We're excited. I don't know. Is Lindsay excited? Yes. So excited. And we have some potential horse news that we're not gonna spoil yet. But if we have a horse theme going on right now, we're super excited about it. And we'll let you know how that plays out. If it plays out in our favor. If not, we'll probably cry quietly in our hearts because it's a pretty cool opportunity if it works out. This is morning in Maybell. Look at that dog. Thank you. And take care of the dogs in the morning routine. And then we're gonna go hang out for the day. Well that was pretty cool. I don't know how far they're driving them down but they kept on going. Took a little break over here and then they're moving on. What was your one favorite horse? My one? There was too many. Too many favorites. Wrangler position at Bull Hill Guest Ranch. Lindsay, we still have two positions open for 2022 summer season. Both positions start immediately. One opening is for a full season made through October and the second is available to a student made through August which would be me. We provide a room to each of our Wranglers and all food and drinks are included. We would not have a position available for your husband. Most of our Wranglers live on site in shared housing and we unfortunately do not have RV hookups at the ranch. I don't know if this would be the right fit only because we do not have a place for an RV and we cannot offer couples housing at this time. I wish you luck on your search. It sounds like a lovely journey. Happy trails. So a little disappointing news for now. We'll see what happens with the follow up and we're not going to force it. We don't believe in forcing things like this. We believe God is going to open a door or close a door and we'll go wherever the other doors open. Sticking with the horse theme why don't we go find some wild horses? Kentucky Derby yesterday we got the horse drive this morning we're going to go see some wild horses hopefully and drive out there. There's no promise or guarantee that they're going to be there. How many are out there? I don't know the exact number but 479 are rounded up last year which was quite a big chunk. Yeah. So they're usually around water and there's one place on water. So we're going to drive out. We'll show you of course but it's paved road out to a certain point and then we go off road and this is not the off road mobile to go do. I think last time we calculated it was like a 40 or 50 mile loop It's a big loop. And we're not going to do that. But we'll go maybe 5 or 10 miles and see what we see. And if we see horses, you'll see horses. If we don't see horses, you just saw horses saw horses and I can go and throw some b-roll in here and you can see horses again. Seahorse like in the water and saw horse like the cutting. That's such cool like how did that happen? The past tense? Anyway we're going to go see if we can see see saw, sue saw see some horses, see some mustangs by the seashore We're going to go see some mustangs. She sells seahorses by the seashore Something like that. You know I don't have a clue what's going on. I'm just a driver So we are out here in 2018. Almost around the same time as we are here now and there was no one here. There may have been one RV or two RVs in one area and we saw quite a few horses. We didn't have to go very far in. Well we're here now and it is full I mean full to the brim of RVers with ATVs and dirt bikes and they are hauling butt around everywhere. They've made tracks. They have signs up. It's like an extreme sport day weekend or something. I wouldn't even call them wild horses. And there's no wild horses. They're not going to be anywhere around here because of this. So we are trying Yeah there is a watering hole but there's people surrounding it and there's no way horses are even going to go try to drink out of it because of all these people here. So that means we are going to turn around and leave unfortunately. There's a lot of green grass here and the horses can't enjoy it. Yeah the horses would love it. But I mean this is a known ATV area so. Well the horses were here first Yeah. But like all things, God bless man first. God bless American first. I am an American. I am grateful for that. But my goodness do we exploit things. That we do. Guess there's always another year to come back. We are back in Dinosaur. Parked at the Dinosaur Welcome Center. And we're not going to the Dinosaur Center today. It's closed It's Sunday evening. We are going to be hanging out here tonight and get up pretty early in the morning. We're going to go find some real dinosaurs. What do you say about that? Yeah. What's your favorite kind of dinosaur? I don't have a favorite. You don't have a favorite dinosaur? Everybody's got a favorite dinosaur. Duckie. Duckie is my favorite. Duckie, land before time. Yes. What kind of dinosaur is Duckie? I don't remember. She was the water one. Wasn't she? She liked to swim. Not Petrie? No, not Petrie. Little pterodactyl? No. I like baby pterodactyls. We're going to go find a baby pterodactyl and a Duckie. Whatever she was. We're going to do that tomorrow morning. Right now we're going to chill out. We're over the horses, so we're going to transition into dinosaur mode. Take a good nap for that. Good night's sleep. Wake up and flip the switch and be ready for dinosaurs.