A Diamond ranch in the rough

REPUBLIC, Ferry County — As the line of horses and riders ambled up a hillside through sunny aspens, Ponderosa pines and wild currant blushing with the first chill of autumn, our group of city slickers felt more and more like characters in a Western movie.

Like, maybe, "City Slickers." Or, at that particular moment, "Blazing Saddles." To be specific: the campfire scene.

Yes, that scene.

The thing was, one of our horses — Val, a plus-size gal, part draft horse and part quarter horse — had a reputation for being, uh, windy. And the exertion of climbing up toward a rocky promontory where we'd look out over the purple hills surrounding the pretty Sanpoil River valley seemed to set off her, er, problem.

And, in some things, there's nothing subtle about horses.

"Geez, I've got rocket propulsion!" howled Mark, the 30-year-old marketing consultant from Seattle who rode Val during a three-day stay at the K Diamond K Guest Ranch in this old gold-mining district of far Eastern Washington.

"You know, I do try to match the horse's personality with the rider, but I want you to know I didn't mean anything that way," apologized Clay McDermott, our 19-year-old trail guide — known in authentic ranch lingo as the wrangler.

I tried to decide whether I should be flattered for being given a handsome Appaloosa named Dutch, who liked to take the lead on the trail, or humbled by his tendency to try to eat every darned weed, leaf and blade of grass in reach along every blasted step of a ride. (I'm trying to cut down on snacking.)

For city folks, a few days on a ranch is a great way to get back to basics.

And while hanging around a barn can sometimes bring a tear to your eye for reasons other than sentiment, this scenic ranch country also offers moments of breathing pine-scrubbed air on hilltops where the only sound is the "skreee! skreee!" of a circling hawk, of clapping along to banjo music at the edge of a campfire, of finding time to toss a game of horseshoes or try whirling a lariat.

With those kinds of "up" sides to a ranch vacation, the other stuff doesn't mean beans.

Home on the ranch

The K Diamond K isn't a fancy resort. It's the home of the Konz family, headed by 82-year-old Steve Konz and his 74-year-old wife, June Konz, who moved from the wet side of the mountains to lightly populated Ferry County in the early 1960s. Here they started a 1,600-acre cattle ranch and raised five kids. June has a veterinary practice, still operating on the ranch.

As children grew up and moved out, they began taking in guests to help keep the ranch going. Visitors stayed in spare bedrooms in the ranch house. The oldest son, Dave, moved into a cabin on the property, and in 2002 started building the next big thing for the Konz family: a guest lodge.

The K Diamond K opened 8 of the 16 guest rooms this summer in the new lodge, situated a few hundred feet from the family home. Built of peeled logs of fir and larch cut on the ranch, and constructed mostly by family and friends, the lodge is a masterpiece of rural workmanship. Rustic details range from forked-timber balcony railings to inlaid wooden horseshoes in the stairs, complemented by elegantly gleaming pine floors. Twin stone fireplaces flank the lobby and dining room.

"This is just gorgeous, I didn't expect anything this beautiful — the ambience is like a storybook!" said Arlene Sullivan, a visitor from Honolulu, on her first visit to a dude ranch.

"I went out and cut every tree," said Dave Konz, 44, a bearded bear of a man with a knack for forging quick friendships.

The ranch operates on the "American plan," meaning that for $150 per night per person, you get lodging, three meals a day and all activities, including twice-daily trail rides if you choose.

Buffet meals are eaten at shared tables, which helps guests get to know each other. I shared my stay with the Sullivans, Jim and Arlene, who had come for a small family reunion with their grown children who live in Seattle. Also staying were a retired German couple, Brigitte and Bernd Göpfert, from Berlin. (Many Germans are fascinated with the American West; this was the third German couple at the ranch this season.)

Joining guests at meals are the ranch hands — such as William Beier, a 70-something banjo picker from North Dakota who stopped to work while "just passing through" — and the Konz family, which makes it feel much less like a hotel and much more like a visit with a congenial bunch of relatives.

Don't expect gourmet. The only thing French might be fries. Steak night (usually Saturdays) brings cuts that are tender and tasty, but other meals tend toward meatballs with gravy, or tuna casserole topped by potato chips. According to wrangler Clay, who came here to take a break from a college education that wasn't what he'd hoped for, this is a side of the world where most music on the radio talks about "your gun or your woman."

And as the cook says in the movie "City Slickers," the food is "hot, brown and there's plenty of it!"

It's a ranch. The real deal.

Saddle up

As we climbed into the saddle at 9 a.m. on a pristine September morning, the sun was warming air that had carried a hint of frost at dawn. Around the barnyard, the whicker of horses blended with the doodle-do of roosters and the chug of a tractor. Chickens pecked underfoot and barn kitties came up to stretch and be patted, while in a nearby shed baby goats suckled on their mother.

Clay took a moment to explain each horse's "operating instructions." Dutch responds to neck reining or leg pressure; "Sam is a slow starter, you'll need to kick at first." Also in the lineup this day: Val, Pepper, Cooper, Thorin, Lucy and Big Red.

Along the trail, riders enjoyed an easy camaraderie, with time to chat and joke. As we headed up through an open meadow and I vainly wrestled with Dutch's reins to stop him from grabbing bites of meadow grass, Mark put it in perspective for me: "It's like we were walking through a field of bacon. You'd want to stop and try some!"

Well, OK, if you put it that way.

Out here, far from the offices of the city, it's easy to unplug, literally and figuratively. Most guests' cellphones had no signal here. But as we climbed a high hill, one rider's phone buzzed in a pocket. Without stopping his horse, he answered it and proceeded to have a long business conversation with a client as we rode.

Black-hatted Clay, with a twinkle in his eye, steered us off the trail and up a steep embankment where the horses lunged to find footing.

"Let's see if we can shake him off the phone," he said with an impish tone. "As in, 'I'm sorry, I've got to go, I'm climbing a cliff face!' "

The old homestead

In the evening, Dave Konz loaded bales on the back of a flatbed truck and took us for a hayride down the road to visit his family's original homesite.

"The Little Red Farmhouse" that his folks first moved to decades ago, and where Dave lived "until I was about 8," is no longer there. His family donated it to the local fire district for practice years ago. "The year right after the movie 'Backdraft' came out, I lit the house on fire," Dave told us.

But what remains are the rustic remnants of a pioneer homestead, complete with the authentic two-seater outhouse and the gaping entrance to an old gold mine. (Miners took more than 3 million ounces of gold from Republic-area shafts from the late 1800s until the last commercial mine closed in the 1990s.)

Dave told sweet tales of his childhood as bats flitted in and out of the mine opening at twilight.

Back at the lodge, we all sat outside around a bonfire as William picked his banjo and a Konz family friend, Sid Cowan, strummed a guitar. Amid the salty-sweet smoke of pine logs, we clapped and sang along: "Hang down your head, Tom Doooo-ley!"

Brigitte and Bernd entertained with a Marlene Dietrich song. And we heard more tunes, from George Jones to Woody Guthrie, as first stars gleamed in the sky and the moon rose above the ridge.

Reflecting on years of toil to build the lodge, with times of frustration between moments of accomplishment, Dave Konz looked on as his friends and guests reveled in music and companionship.

"This is what it's all about," he said with a satisfied smile.

Brian J. Cantwell: 206-748-5724 or bcantwell@seattletimes.com