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If there is a cowboy in Colorado who has taught more 3-year-olds how to rope a steer than Justin Iacovetto, I'd like to shake his hand.

Iacovetto hangs his chaps and bridle in the tack room at Saddleback Ranch on Routt County Road 179 south of Milner. He taught my niece, Bess Higgins, how to throw a lariat Saturday night.

Bess is a feisty little cowgirl from Middletown, Conn. She reminds me a bit of Calamity Jane. When she wakes up in the morning, she comes out of the bedroom wearing a smile that would melt a Colorado blizzard. When she isn't busy being a cowgirl, Bess is a fairy princess. She even brought her magic wand in her carry-on luggage.

But Calamity Bess also has a wild side. The range boss who is careless enough to wake her early from her afternoon nap will quickly regret it. I'd sooner grab a timber rattler by the tail.

Bess's parents signed us up for an evening sleigh ride and dinner at Saddleback Ranch over the weekend, and we invited her brother, Ramblin' Jack, to come along with us. At age 5, he already is taking pony-riding lessons back in Connecticut. The kid knows his way around horseflesh.

If you're a longtime resident of the Yampa Valley, like I am, most seasons you take a pass on the activities and excursions designed to entertain vacationers. It's funny how it takes houseguests to show us how much fun there is to be had out there.

I'll bet most of the serious skiers in Steamboat Springs have never taken advantage of the opportunity to meet up with Olympic skiers Billy Kidd and Nelson Carmichael for a free ski lesson. Maybe you think meeting Billy at the sign atop Thunderhead is for "tourists." But I can tell you from personal experience, that fella can make a big difference in your skiing with just a few well-chosen sentences. I don't care who you are.

Similarly, the last time I invited myself to spend an hour with one of the valley's professional fishing guides, he taught me a fish-hooking move that I hadn't picked up on in 25 years of angling.

More than a decade has gone by since my last sleigh ride.

And Saturday night's experience at Saddleback exceeded my expectations. Our van rolled up a snowy lane and came to a stop in front of several large sleds big enough to carry several families.

Ramblin' Jack, who cannot help the fact that he was born an Eastern skeptic, had predicted our sleigh would be mounted on wheels. Even after I patiently explained to him the snow would be deep and the sleighs would have big runners, his response was, "For reals?"

I wish you could have seen Ramblin Jack's face when Iacovetto strolled by with two fistfuls of leather reins attached to a team of giant Belgian draft horses.

The Iacovetto family cares for as many as 1,500 head of cattle on their ranch in the summers and continues to use draft horses to feed the cattle that winter on the ranch. The team that was pulling us toward our steak dinners had been retired from the daily feed loop after four or five years. Younger draft horses were being used for that chore, Iacovetto said. A team can comfortably pull a sleigh loaded with about 1,500 pounds of hay. Each animal gets a daily ration of about 60 pounds of hay and a gallon of oats to keep their muscles in tone.

Of course, that made me concerned that my dinner was going to be hay and oats. But Justin's mom stuffed us with steak, baked potatoes, salad, beans and peach cobbler.

After the meal, Iacovetto wheeled a plastic steer into the middle of the dance floor and invited all the little cowpokes to take a turn at ropin', Yampa Valley style. Calamity Bess was a little shy at first, but Iacovetto has such a gentle way with kids that he had her ready to rodeo in two minutes flat.

Saddleback Ranch is just one of a half dozen family-run dinner sleigh ride operations in the valley. You can learn all the details in an article by Allison Plean on page 68 of our Winter VacationLand activities guide. It's available on newsstands all over town.

I'm reluctant to use the "M" word too often in this space, but our team of draft horses towed us through a magical winter landscape the other night at Saddleback. It was Calamity Bess who observed that it was snowing even though the stars were out.

The snowflakes weren't the big, feathery flakes that add up to a big dump in Steamboat. Instead, they were the delicate ice crystals that precipitate out of frigid clouds.

I told Calamity Bess that the snow that falls on starry nights is really fairy dust.

I think she bought it.