King Ranch

(This barn is rumored to have been used in a Ford and Toby Keith commercial.Supposedly, the Running W was removed and the Ford Oval was placed on the barn. )

On Friday after Christmas, we went to the King Ranch in Kingsville. It was really a great day trip and well worth the drive, at least we thought it was. They offer a couple of different tours, one of which was the historical tour which is what we did. the other tour is a nature and wildlife tour, but we saw plenty of wildlife on the tour we took so no need to pay for the other tour unless you are interested in birding. Anyhoo, the tour was on a 20 or so passenger bus/van and was very comfortable. The driver/tour guide was very knowledgeable and friendly. On the first part of the tour we saw the quarter horses. We saw breed mares in the pasture, stallions in another, your horses near the stables. What beautiful creatures. Does anyone know why they are called Quarter Horses? Take the tour for the answer!

We also saw two different breds of cattle, the two the ranch are known for, the Santa Cruz and the Santa Gertrudis. I forget the specs of the the two, but I know one was larger with bigger bone structure, and the other was darker in color which came from one cow named Monkey. I'm not sure which is which or which one is in this picture, but I thought it was neat that you can see the King Ranch Running W brand on this cow. There are a couple of stories as to how they came up with the Running W brand. One says it resembles a rattlesnake, another was that the people Capt King bought the either the ranch from or the cows from used a Running M and he just turned it over to make it a W, the last was that it represented the Rio Grande River on which Capt King was the captain of a riverboat.

We also saw long horns. Typically the ranch doesn't bred them for profit. They are more for novelty, and are just really cool to see. I know that since we moved to Texas I've been wanting to see some up close. I got better pictures of the front and faces of some but this one just had really massive horns. As I mentioned earlier we also saw our share of wildlife. We saw lots of deeer, does and bucks, we saw a scrawny little fox, some turkey vultures, and several osprey. Oh yeah, some wild turkeys, too. All-in-all it was a great day and a pretty good tour. The highlight for most of the guests on the tour was the Big House, the King Family home. I wasn't able to get any good pictures of it but you can visit the King Ranch website to see more and learn more about the ranch and the tours that are offered.