Quarter Circle JD Riding Stables, Arizona: Making memories one ride at a time

Quarter Circle JD Riding Stables based at the Grand Canyon Caverns near Seligman, Arizona offers an old fashioned western riding experience that genuinely lives up to their promise, “where memories are made one ride at a time.” Here in the high desert of the Colorado Plateau, you can give your horse its head and forge your own trail, riding from ridge to ridge amongst the sage brush and pinion trees of Coconino & Yavapai Counties in company of the amiable husband and wife team of Jimi and Donna Owens and their grandson, Tyrell Smith, 14 (Photo above from left to right: Jimi, Donna and Tyrell).  Their quiet self-assurance and good-natured banter is cathartic and slowly rubs off those rough edges acquired through city living, until it’s just me, my horse Rascal, and old friends riding through the bunch grass and Indian Paintbrush, laughing, chatting, admiring the scenery and watching the evening shadows as they gradually lengthen until the sun dips slowly beneath the horizon and bids farewell to the desert for another day.

It’s easy to let Jimi, 54, and Donna, 50, convey you back to a bygone age of cowboying. Just head out to their stables at the Grand Canyon Caverns on Route 66 and find out what a trail ride should really be like. Quarter Circle JD Riding Stables have been at the Grand Canyon Caverns since May 2007 when the previous riding stable quit because they didn’t feel the money was worth their time. 

It’s extremely tough making a living on this - now bypassed - section of old Route 66. The Grand Canyon Caverns – one of the largest dry caverns in the US – and the Hualapai reservation’s horse-shoe shaped glass skywalk at Grand Canyon West are the major local attractions and - along with the Hualapai Lodge in Peach Springs – the primary source of local employment. With such slim pickings, I wondered why Jimi and Donna would lay down their hat in such a challenging business location. “We’ve lived in some prettier country…but…as far as an all around place to be able to do what we are doing this would definitely be the best place…this is home, this is our mountain,” said Donna. Although the stables are open year-round, the season - other than Spring Break - runs from May 1st-September 1^st and visitor numbers start to drop off when winter sets in. “We’re still just trying to get it to where we can hold our heads up,” said Jimi and then added, “We’ve always been independently poor, so it’s not a big deal.”

There’s no question that Jimi is the genuine article having learned from an early age how to ride, rope, saddle and bronc’. He grew up on the Colorado Plateau on the east side of Arizona in the Mogollon Rim and White Mountains area leaving home at fourteen to blaze his own trail. He went to breaking horses and cowboying all over the western United States including Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Colorado and New Mexico. Jimi met his bride-to-be in a pub in Springerville, Arizona. “I was sittin’ over in a dark corner of a booth,” said Jimi, “and she walked in and it was like there was nobody else in the whole room.” Even the toughest cowboy still knows how to cut a rug and whether it was his two steppin’, his rugged good looks, or his ability to get past Donna’s Pit Bull guard dog, Duchess, Donna and Jimi have been inseparable ever since. “We’ve always done everything together,” said Donna. The result is six children and sixteen grandchildren - ages 1-16.

 

Living life on the range can be tough on a family. You ride out for long hours in all weather conditions, herding, branding, roping, breaking colts, baling hay and mending fences. “I’ve cowboyed twenty-seven years and we’ve raised the kids on the ranches. There were places we went to sleep by a coal oil lamp cos’ there wasn’t any electricity, the water supply came from a walled in creek up the canyon a mile…from a spring,” said Jimi - and Donna chipped in, ”It was the sweetest water you ever tasted.” Jimi continued, “I had a garden that was a full acre and the kids just loved it, growing their own plants and weeding ‘em and then gettin’ to eat the stuff. It was just awesome. When we do the branding and everything it was a family affair. The kids were all out there helping give shots and brand, and me and Lil’ Jimi were doing the ropin’…life was good. “It was like it was one big picnic when it was time to do all the work,” said Donna, “we just got out there and had fun, had a heck of a good time. The kids loved it, we loved it.” When Jimi wasn’t wrangling, he used to team rope at the rodeo and Donna barrel-raced, an event that showcases a horse’s speed and agility and a Cowgirl’s horsemanship. Jimi also took to writing poetry and short stories and his first book is to be published later this year – it will be available through their website – www.brandeeshorses.com - and at the Caverns.

Jimi and Donna currently have a string of seventeen horses, though only eight are deemed suitable to be put on the line and Donna explained why this is the case. “The horses have to meet certain criteria or they are not going on the line…they have got to have a good mindset. That’s the main thing, but they have got to look decent too,” she said. “They’ve got to be the calibre that you can put a kid up on there,” said Jimi. “Kids and first time riders are sacred. They rule the entire ride,” added Donna.

JD Riding Stables are extremely family oriented which no doubt stems from raising six kids on a ranch on a limited budget. So, and especially in these hard times, they’re focused on giving every family a good time. If a family “show up and mom and the three kids are gonna go and dad’s not, I’ll throw a bridle on that next horse. Dad’s going. It doesn’t cost him nothin’. We remember what is was like to not be able to have both of us go on the Ferris wheel…those two rides, the half hour and the hour we do for families. Period,” said Jimi. JD Riding Stables have deliberately kept the ½ hour and 1 hour ride prices low, to encourage families to ride together, though naturally anyone can take advantage of this great deal.

I don’t ride very often, usually saving this activity for those occasions when it can facilitate the exploration of new areas like Jammu and Kashmir in India or riding in the shadow of the hoodoos of Bryce Canyon in Utah. The Arizona high desert near Peach Springs is pretty enough, but here on the crest of a ridge on the open range, bathed in the afterglow of a golden sunset and accompanied by the most important women in my life - my wife and my mum - I know at this moment there’s no place I’d rather be. And that’s why you’ll keep coming back, because that’s what Quarter Circle JD Riding Stables does best, “making memories one ride at a time.”

 

To contact Jimi & Donna call: 1- 928-422-4842 or E-mail: donna@brandeeshorses.com or visit: www.brandeeshorses.com