Sitting on a plane on the way to New Mexico, Kelly wondered how in the world she had ever let her friends talk her into this. The girls had insisted that she needed to get out of her office and stop being the "secretary slave" to her boss. They also had insisted that alongside of her break from work she needed some quality female attention that wasn't from a coffee shop girl or restaurant waitress.

 

It wasn't as if Kelly was against the outdoors. She loved growing up in the city where you were smarter to walk everywhere and there were parks wherever they could be squeezed in, if you felt like exercising. It was just that city exercise, and out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere exercise, were two entirely different worlds and she wasn't so sure she'd be able to keep up. The girls had said that they wanted to go to New Mexico to get a taste of Wild West country. They wanted camp fires, horses and lots of sexy cowboys and cowgirls. Kelly's friend Julia was a lesbian, like she was, and their friend Trish was straight and loved "bad boys". The camp fires and cowgirls part sounded perfect, it was the horse part that had Kelly worried. The only horses Kelly had ever interacted with, were the ones hooked up to a carriage and had a driver in a top hot looking to make a few bucks around Central Park by offering ride to tourists. Her friends also promised that a dude ranch vacation would offer lots of "adventure." Kelly was all up for the adventure part, she was just hoping that that adventure didn't involve being chased by a steer, a run in with poisonous snakes or flash floods. She knew she was being a bit overdramatic, but she was a city girl after all and she knew she was going to feel like a fish out of water in the middle of the desert.

When they arrived in New Mexico, one of the first things Kelly noticed was the stifling heat. She had heard that New Mexico wasn't as hot as most parts of Arizona, Nevada or California, so she was hopeful that it wouldn't be too bad. But, New York doesn't typically see 100 degree days as an average, so even though the humidity was much lower, the heat was definitely intense. She could definitely understand why desert wildlife comes alive during the evening hours when it's cooler. Well, it was probably better than vacationing somewhere where the temperatures were constantly below freezing.

 

After retrieving their luggage at the airport carousel, a special shuttle bus from the ranch picked-up Kelly and her friends, along with a few other passengers who were also headed to the same location, and drove them on a scenic drive out to the dude ranch. Kelly was surprised by the amount of green trees and grass she saw during their drive to the ranch, as she was expecting a much more arid, tumbleweed filled desert environment. She was beginning to see why people would want to vacation and even live out here. The driver was a New Mexico native, and he offered a lot of fascinating tales along the way. Kelly's anxiety filled perception over vacationing at a dude ranch quickly changed from feeling like a fish out of water, to one of excited anticipation and discovery.