Meanwhile, Back At The Ranch......

They were busy suckering tourists into paying a whole dollar for teensy tiny bottles of water, and laughing at the losers who stepped into the copious piles of animal poop lying around. That would be me. While wearing sandals. Ewwwwww.

This place is Enchanted Springs Ranch just outside San Antonio, and the first tourist trap, er I mean "attraction" we hit after leaving Butt Camp. It's supposed to be set up like a Wild West Town but we saw Indians squatting next to their teepee drinking Coke and using their BlackBerrys, and cowboys with cell phones in their gun holsters, so I'm not sure just how authentic it is. The Rotary Club put on a demonstration using their trained knights. The one in blue is a female knight atop Thor, the supposed Guiness Book Of World Record holder for being the tallest, living horse. They wanted to charge 10 dollars just to take a picture of Thor, but I snapped this when nobody was looking, and I made sure that I remained too far away for the knights to beat me with their jousting thingies. See what a good blog friend I am? I won't charge you anything to gaze wonderingly at the magnificent Thor.

All the kids got a chance to sit on Woodrow The Longhorn. You can tell by his expression that there is nothing he loves more on a 90 degree day than to have a procession of strange kids plop their butts down on his back. In the background is the cotton candy stand where they were whipping it up fresh. It was yummy and stickarific. We practically spent the next hour licking ourselves to get all the cotton candy residue off.

Us on the only free thing featured in the entire place even though we paid an exorbitant entrance fee. The covered wagon ride allowed us to meet some of our fellow ranch hands. They were weird, and asked me if my children were foster kids. WTH??!!!??? The man looked like Jed Clampett in a cowboy hat while the woman resembled a grizzled Willie Nelson with her long braids hanging down off her shoulders. That was an extraordinarily long 20 minutes.

My little cowboy wannabes all tried their hand lassoing a metal calf while mounted on this mechanical horse. I only took one picture because right after Caterpillar got down, my little Boo Boo lassoed me in the eye. I liked this kind of horse because I figured I was finally safe from walking into steaming piles of crap. That is, until, I stepped into a mound of metal shavings located directly behind the horse.

That'll teach them ornery whippersnappers to dare ask for another dollar bottle of water. My daughter, Monkey, cleverly filled her empty container from a spigot outside the saloon. The bar maid did not look kindly upon this act of cunning though. Monkey's just lucky that the gallows stage remained occupied until we left. In my opinion, the scoundrels responsible for serving camp fire grilled hot dogs wrapped up in a TORTILLA should be charged with criminal mischief. I'm sure they had hot dog buns in the Old West and didn't have to co-opt another culture to serve up their weenie creations. It's hot dog blasphemy, I tell you. Blasphemy! The other food vendor charging 8 bucks for a paper plate of stringy barbecue should be strung up for highway robbery.