As we crossed over the southern border of Colorado we saw a scraggly handwritten sign for “Farm Fresh Eggs” with an arrow pointing to someone’s home.  This is actually very common and fresh green eggs is one of Rob’s favorite things (Dr. Seuss anyone?)  We pulled up into the driveway of a ranch hand’s home and got stared down by two strong shouldered men…”hi there, uhh do you guys have eggs?”  They started laughing at us, “Are you lost?”

I’m not sure how we got ourselves into it, maybe it was my enthusiasm for being on a ranch after I had just declared my new found dream of being a cowgirl, but we found ourselves helping around with chores in Leroy’s backyard.  This was my chance, it felt like a take-your-daughter-to-work day!  I was following Leroy around to gather up chicken eggs, I was stepping on and cleaning up all the poop, I was yelling at the dogs to not kill any of the chickens and at Rob to stop laughing at me.  It was great!  I think Leroy also enjoyed having some company around too because he offered to let us camp out in front of his house – granted we just make sure to yell out and stay in our tent lest he accidentally shoots us chasing off mountain lions or bears in the middle of the night.

Leroy was seriously the greatest host ever.  Who shoots a rooster for dinner that night?  Who teaches you how to pluck, skin, and gut the little sucker so you can add it to your repertoire of skills?  Who gives you a cooler of bear, elk, and venison meat to eat for days?  Leroy does.  For all of his big talk about being scary and unfriendly, he sure seemed sweet to us (though he did have signs like “We save bullets around here, so no warning shots will be fired” but I think it was just for show).  Even the pups made friends with Leroy’s guard dog Moose and his female collie.  After Leroy gave us a tour of the property we found the dogs freed from their leash… We speculate that Ronan may have gotten the bitch pregnant and Locke accidentally killed a chicken so Moose was covering it up for him.  Dogs gotta stick together.