Kansas Visitor's Guide 2007/2008 - (Page 36) THE WESTERN EXPERIENCE “YOU’RE TAKIN’ TO THAT HORSE real good,” Jack Lil tells one of his young hands as they nudge a herd of Herefords away from a prairie watering hole in the Smoky Hills of central Kansas. Those words are high praise, indeed, considering this hand is on his first horseback ride. Jack’s JL Canyon Ranch (20 miles west of Salina) is among several in Kansas where visitors can get a taste of ranch life on a working cattle spread. At JL, you can help on daylong roundups or lend Jack a hand around the ranch. “We’ll maybe fix the windmill, check the cows,” says Jack, who’s as skinny and brown as a cedar fence post. On the 4,000-acre, high-plains Moore Ranch (40 miles southeast of Dodge City), Joe and Nancy Moore and their guests spend three days moving a herd of 400 longhorns nearly 30 miles across the prairie from winter to summer ranges. From their 40-horse herd, Nancy and Joe can select steeds for riders of any skill level. “On the trail, we sleep under the stars or in cowboy tents (resembling tepees),” Nancy says. She’s also the chef, cooking hearty, Dutch-oven meals from the couple’s chuckwagon. Trailing cattle is an authentic Kansas experience, but at trails’ end, you’re probably not going to celebrate with the rambunctiousness that drovers were famous for during their frontier days. You can get a fair notion of what those days were like in Dodge City. With a blend of earnest accuracy and Hollywood touches from TV’s Gunsmoke, Dodge City’s Boot Hill Museum and Old Front Street re-create life in one of the most fabled towns of the American West. After watching “desperados” shoot it out, wash down the trail dust with a sarsaparilla at the Long Branch Saloon, then check out the tombstones in Boot Hill Cemetery. If you really catch the Western bug, stop in Ellsworth at Drovers Mercantile for authentic 1870s duds. In summer, you’re never far from a rodeo in Kansas. Garden City’s Empire Days Rodeo and the Flint Hills Rodeo in Strong City (20 miles west of Emporia) both are held in June. These colorful competitions celebrate the skills that cattle drovers mastered on the Chisholm Trail and that ranch kids still learn in dusty cattle pens. In addition to bronco and bull riding, events range from steer roping to barrel racing. (From top) A future roping star gets a lesson during the Beef Empire Days Rodeo in Garden City. Putting old boots on fence posts is a ranching-country tradition. (Opposite) Riders water their horses during a roundup at JL Canyon Ranch near Salina. PHOTOGRAPHS, THIS PAGE: JOHN NOLTNER (2). OPPOSITE: MICHAEL C. SNELL Icon numbers correspond to grid on page 39. 36 Official Kansas Visitors Guide
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