“A Montana Family Vacation”

“California Kids, Family Fun Guide”, May 2006
By Carmel L. Mooney and Suzy Mc Minn

  A first trip to Montana exposes you to magnificent mountains, golden plains and exciting adventures guaranteeing an enjoyable journey that will bring you back to Montana, over and over, throughout the years.
Onward we traveled to the Runamuk Guest Ranch, an authentic, no-frills, working cattle ranch. You get a chance to ride and eat with genuine, tobacco-spitting cowboys and adventure out on horses.
  The 18,000-acre cattle, hay and horse ranch offers a variety of exploration from prairie to pines, gold hay fields to huge rock outcroppings. You can ride forever, or so it seems. At night you feel you can touch the millions of stars they seem so close, a-living-at-the-top-of-the-world-feeling.
  Jody Dahl, the lady of the ranch, does all the meal preparation, cooking, serving and clean up. She truly performs miracles in her kitchen. The food is excellent, home cooking at its very best. In addition to this, she also runs the guest side and handles all the marketing.
Toby Dahl handles the ranching, the horses and the riding experience. The horses are the most outstanding riding horses we have experienced at a guest ranch. They are real ranch working horses, Quarter horse type, for beginner to experienced riders. These horses are well trained, safe, kind, and responsive, a joy to ride.
  During a hot day’s horseback ride, relax under a tree with a cooler of sodas and food goodies and Jody’s kitchen will provide anything you need. The little children have their own gentle, hand-led pony to ride. Also, imagine the youngsters having their very own frog to name and keep, then the youngsters can visit their frogs while turtle hunting in the ranch’s pond.
A truly magical experience at Runamuk is experiencing Yoga outside on dinner-table size flat rocks far above a serene valley and bright green forest with a view looking from the Crazy Mountains all the way towards Canada. Jennifer Pisle, YogaFit certified instructor, artist extraordinaire, shares Hatha Yoga in the late afternoon warm sun, with soft breezes and total solitude from civilization. Our physical needs were many after riding on a seven-hour trail ride and cattle drive the day before. Jennifer brought positive energy yet a spiritual calmness to us in our time spent with her.
  A day in town is just the thing after a long ride the previous day and we headed to Roundup, Montana. This darling city/town is situated in a valley near the Musselshell River. We visited unique gift shops, saw the many restaurants, and met some of the friendly residents.
The Roundup Museum has a written and pictorial history of previous cattle drives and Montana pioneers and settlers. Displays of Montana’s gems, rocks, fossils, and local Indian artifacts are interesting and well done. The museum’s walls are hung with beautiful life-like paintings by local artists. Special displays to admire are the realistic homestead cabin, a fully equipped blacksmith shop , the old Rothiemy store and post office, a one-room rural school, a dressmaker shop and an original operating rooms of the old Vicars Hospital, all with authentic furnishings and the tools, trappings and memories of the West.
  We especially enjoyed the spectacular bird, rodent, predator taxidermy mounts complete with their natural history.