The day was finally there and we took our flight to Billings, Montana where the Shively people met us and drove us to their ranch. We introduced ourselves to the other participants of this adventure. We were 11 to have chosen the same destination and the same experience. After 3 hours drive from the airport including 1 hour on a dirt road, we finally arrived to the ranch. For a remote place it is a remote place! No telephone, no cell connection, no TV, cool, finally alone in the middle of nowhere. On that same Sunday night, we had our meeting and we had the opportunity to ask all the questions we wanted, which only increased out stress for the next day. Will we be capable of doing that???

During this meeting we got the following information. It would be a total of 50 mile ride. That we would have to take care of 356 cows and 356 calves! The total journey would take 5 days. We would be helped by, (or we would annoy) 4 cowboys, all followed by a dog. We would get our breakfast at 7am, we would stay all nights at the ranch and not camp. Which meant that we were going to have about 1 hour drive every morning and every evening to get or come back from the coral where the herd would stay for the night. We then met the cook and got a chance to try her skills.