Following is my trip report that I wrote on Facebook with some small changes and more photos.
It's been a few days already since I'm back from the Marlboro Crazy Mountain Ranch in Montana. Being from New York, people keep on asking me what a ranch is (a large farm, especially in the western US and Canada, where cattle or other animals are bred and raised.) and what the Marlboro ranch is, so I'll try and see if written words can bring out the extent to how amazing the experience was for me.
The Marlboro Ranch is an 18,000 acre working ranch which is divided in two parts. There's the guest part where the housing and activities are located, and the rest is for the cattle.
Most buildings in the ranch are old western town buildings which were reconstructed to form a small town on the ranch.
When I first got the FedEx envelope in the mail stating that I'm a possible winner to the ranch, I had no idea what it was. I thought it's probably another piece of spam mail or some kind of timeshare offer so I put it aside for the time being.
A few days later I decided to do a Google search on this and
was pleasantly surprised at what I found so the first I did was to call up Marlboro and confirm that I accept the invitation.
From that point on, I had a lot of paperwork to fill out and then stuff started arriving. First I got my airline tickets, a check for $600 to cover the taxes that this trip will cost me and a $25 gift card to pay for taking my luggage on the plane.
The next day I got luggage and a cap with the ranch logo to wear at the airports so I can meet other people going to the ranch (the Jets cap in the photo is not what they sent).
The reason why Marlboro has this ranch and invites people over for an all expenses paid trip is because by law they are prohibited from advertising in a way that minors under 21 years old can see the ads. So they came up with this plan some years ago to give people the best experience they ever had and like this get them connected to the Marlboro brand.
Our trip began July 6th at Newark Airport heading to Bozeman Airport in Montana with a stop in Chicago (
where I came across the coolest thing ever).
As soon as we passed security in Bozeman, we were greeted by the ranch staff - dressed in the easy to recognize red shirts and cowboy hats - and were notified that they're collecting our luggage and we'll find it in our rooms at the ranch. We then ate lunch at the airport and hopped onto the busses for the hour-long drive to the ranch with views of the crazy mountains that are breathtaking in by itself.
Shortly before arriving to the ranch we looked out of our windows and were greeted by
2 cowboys with horses on each side of the bus.
We pulled into the ranch at around 1:30 PM and we were assigned to our rooms where our luggage was already waiting for us together with some surprises on our beds.
Then we went to get fitted for our cowboy hats and boots and went to the general store to buy some gifts with the $150 coin they gave us to buy stuff.
I don't remember the exact schedule that I had for every day due to the fact that they kept us busy from early morning till late at night with all activities and food but I'll try to write down everything we did in the order of how I remember them.
Besides the 3 regular meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) there were snacks 24 hours a day and they also had an appetizer before dinner and a snack after dinner, which each of those were more than I have for a regular meal.
I couldn't eat any of those because I keep kosher, so for the first time ever, they contacted the Chabad Rabbi in Bozeman and arranged kosher meals for me to be shipped to the ranch, double sealed. It wasn't easy explaining to all my new friends there that kosher doesn't mean that the food is blessed by the Rabbi...
For activities I chose over the 2 days that we did activities to do Ziplining (their biggest line is 2,000 feet long while going over 65mph), off-roading in a big red H1 Hummer (was really fun), fly fishing (a new experience for me), a tour of the whole ranch (very interesting), ATV, clay shooting (first time I used a shotgun but it was really fun even though I wasn't too good at it and got all bruised by the recoil), horseback riding.
Music. DJ. Live band. Poker games. Outdoor dinners and shows. All in all it was fun packed, full days which I'll remember for life.
The relaxation and calmness that I had there - no worries about anything (besides for calling my wife...) - is something that just can't be described in words. It was something out of this world.
I got to meet amazing people from all over the country, amazing staff (I don't know where they find those people, but they're the best there is). It was really great to get to know so many new friends. I miss you all already.
The day we left was a sad day for everyone and no one was ready to leave the ranch just yet. But we had to make room for the new group of guest that were scheduled to arrive later that day.
The 2 full days and 2 half days that I was there, won't be forgotten so fast and I stay with a bunch of memories of this trip. Hopefully I'll be able to return again and have this experience all over again.
