It’s high season for barrel racers and rodeo riders, so hitch up your Wranglers and mosey over for proof positive that from Last Chance to Craig, and Snowmass to Steamboat Springs, Colorado is a proud state of cow towns.
Bronco bustin’ ain’t your style? There’s more than one trail you can follow when you want to live the Cowboy Way.
MUSICAL GENE AUTRY TRIBUTE
Roll up your riatas and pull your sombreros down tight, and mosey over to Durango’s Bar D Chuckwagon. The phenomenally popular Western swing musicians Riders in the Sky perform there at 8:30 p.m. Monday and Tuesday.
Ranger Doug and his crew rounded up a special tribute to the late legendary cowboy Gene Autry, who would have been 100 years old this year, along with their uniquely addictive mix of affectionate tributes, original tunes and wry humor.
COWBOY UP IN THE KITCHEN
When you cowboy up, you do what it takes to get the job done, and it’s not always a pretty sight. The online advice site recommends “The Cowboy” method – “quick, sneaky and rodeo-driven ways to fix your dish, collapsed cakes, spoiled starters or ruined side dishes” – and supplies some examples.
A few stand out, like the last-ditch Speedy Vegetable Soup, which combines vegetable stock, diced potato, celery and herbs, liquefies the works in a blender or food processor and boils it in a wide, shallow saucepan. Tip: Add deep-fried onion if possible, but skip the garlic.
Other rescues lead cowpokes to wonder exactly who’s the chump here. Fixing a flat cake by slicing it horizontally in half and then sandwiching the sunken halves with a thick mortar of filling? Ace in the hole? Or a hole in the head?
Chew it over for yourself at .
BOOKEROOS
If you can’t saddle up, find a bunkroll and start reading “Cowboy Stories” (Chronicle Books, $16.96), a collection splendidly illustrated by
Barry Moser’s dynamic engravings. Between the covers, Moser rounds up yarns by veterans of Western prose – Dorothy Johnson, Larry
McMurtry, Zane Gray, Louis L’Amour – and a few Western greenhorns – including Annie Proulx, Ed Gorman and Elmore Leonard – who made their names in other genres.
Most are original short stories, but there also are excerpts from benchmark Westerns – Jack Schaefer’s “Shane,” Owen Wister’s “The Virginian,” McMurtry’s “Lonesome Dove” and Tom Groneberg’s “The Secret Life of Cowboys.” Ranchettes might cover the prairies where bison once grazed, but the literary plains remain forever untamed.
SADDLE UP
Western Americana collector Bill Mackin, author of the venerable Western artifact guide “Cowboy Collectibles,” is the curator and a primary donor of the Cowboy Collection at the Museum of Northwest Colorado in Craig.
For more than 50 years, Mackin has accumulated cowboy and gunfighter memorabilia, from old Colt pistols to the metal bracelets that hobbled outlaws. He’s got spurs that jingle, six-shooters, coiled riatas and deputy badges.
The collection takes up much of the museum’s second floor at 590 Yampa Ave., Craig; for more information, call 970-824-6360 or go online to .
CUT A PATH TO STEAMBOAT
No matter what road you take to Steamboat Springs, you’ll learn about F.M. Light & Sons, 830 Lincoln Ave. Long before seeing the city limits sign, drivers encounter one of 150 signs advertising the Western gear store that Clarence Light established in November 1905.
For generations, F.M. Light (970-879-1822) has shod real cowhands, buckle bunnies and rhinestone cowboys, providing $5 souvenir hats and toy sheriff stars along with working boots and ranch-hardy clothing.
A few doors down, at 811 Lincoln Ave., you’ll find the upstart Yippie-i-O (970-870-3354), where being a cowboy is a retro-chic state of mind and an interior décor theme, not a career option. This is the place for anyone who pictures the Old West just as depicted by Gene Autry, the Lone Ranger and other residents of the fictional range where discouraging words were seldom heard.
Another block away, at 730 Lincoln, Bucking Rainbow Outfitters (970-879-8747) strikes a happy medium, employing knowledgeable fishing guides and immensely patient tubing wranglers. It’s worth a stop just to admire the Bucking Rainbow’s signature T-shirts featuring a cowboy astride a renegade trout.
