This is what cowboys wish every day was full of! Driving cattle is fun and relaxing, and it is pretty hard for us to really call it work.  We start early so as to get the cattle moved before it gets too hot. And the cattle usually get tired after about 10 miles, so cattle drives are usually done by early afternoon. But this is cowboying on the range, so if things go awry, it may be after dark before we find ourselves back at the homestead.  This doesn’t happen very often, but if it does while you’re part of the crew, it just adds to that unique cowboy experience that we aim to provide at Steens Mountain Guest Ranch.

 

 

Our range has some fairly flat highland desert at about 4000 ft above sea level, and it runs all the way up to about 8000 ft. It can be a pretty rugged country when you get up to the higher elevations. The views from atop the ridges are amazing—you can see for several hundred miles on a clear day, and we have lots of those in the summer (an average of 273 days of sunshine a year). The scenery is unbelievable, the wildlife is abundant, and when a cowboy is up on the summer range moving cows around he may as well have died and gone to heaven! We know you’ll enjoy it just as much.