Home On The (KING-Sized) Range

After being amused by how LITTLE Luckenbach was, I drove through San Antonio and a little southeast of there, to arrive at Kingsville, home of the King Ranch! It is a MASSIVE ranch in south Texas - 825,000 acres! They do ranching, farming, breeding, and even have their own rodeo facility on-site. They also have a meat processing center on the property and there are enough employees that live on the ranch, that they have a school on the ranch, with a yellow school bus that picks up all the kids! I saw it with my own eyes when I was there - man, does a yellow school bus look weird on a ranch full of horses and cattle!

Here is a picture of one of the 'residences' on the ranch - where ranchers live on-site.

And the symbol for the ranch is a "running W" - the symbol that's on the sign above. That is their specific brand. They even fly a flag with their brand on it!

Here is a very cool tree that is just outside the visitors center - how neat!

And of course, there are areas on the ranch that us tourists cannot go.....

Isn't this a beautiful horse?! This is exactly what I pictured a King Ranch horse to look like!

And what's a ranch without cattle?? Here are some cows stopping for a drink in a HUGE 'water bowl'! And our tour guide said that they do not try to control or eliminate their cactus population because in cases of a depression or drought, they can burn off the pokey, spikey things on the cactus and then have the cattle eat the cactus to stay alive (it is a good source of water, sugar and phospherous). Interesting, huh?

What're you lookin' at?!

Here is a picture of the main residence on the ranch. It's an 18-bedroom house that is beautiful! This is the front porch.....or as the Golden Girls would say...'lanai'.

Here are some cattle that are just hanging out 'on the range'. I guess when they brand the cattle, they also put markings on the animal that indicate the lineage of the cattle (who sired them) as well as which pasture they belong to....to prevent too much inbreeding and to contain sickness if it were to break out.

This is a chart of a whole bunch of different registered brands and where they come from. There are thousands of registered brands in the world.

We got to meet an older gentleman nicknamed Lolo who has been a bona fide cowboy his whole life on the King Ranch and is 4th generation rancher - lived on the King Ranch his entire life and so have the people in his family for years and years. He said that he was allowed to start 'breaking' horses when he turned 10 years old! Agh! Anyway, Lolo was sooo interesting and explained about ranching, brands, the King Ranch and much more. He even has his nickname carved/engraved in his chaps!

And if you thought I was going to let this photo op go unnoticed, you don't know me very well! Here's me and Lolo!

Here's a longhorn who appears to not appreciate us looking at him.....our tour guide said that the only reason that they have longhorn cattle on the King Ranch is for historical purposes and notalgia. The actual cattle that are part of the ranching business are not longhorns.

Here's a baby longhorn!

I thought this picture was cool because you can see the 'running W' brand on the side of this longhorn - on the flank. This was also the same one that didn't appreciate me taking his picture. :) haha - joke's on you, pal!

And last, but not least, here's me making sure there's proof that I was actually there! It was a fabulous tour and soooo worth it. I had a blast!