Alright, so I read the first few pages of reviews for Muddy Water, and I can see it's a mix of both…read morenegative and positive experiences. Both sets of reviews are valid, and I am writing based on my experience here. We are from out of town - the East Coast - and we decided to come to Muddy Water Ranch for a group horseback riding experience. One of my friends - an experienced rider, and one who lives in the area - had visited before and recommended this for the group. First, highly emphasize the word "muddy" in Muddy Water. This place is a no-frills, no hullabaloo ranch - and yes, it's filled with mud, rocks, trees, and horse poop. When you pull up to this place, it indeed looks shady, as in unkept and not extraordinarily professional - but we took it for what it was worth. This is clearly a mom-and-pop, cash-only business that operates as such. The staff all have aliases for some reason or another and yeah, you sign 'ska-free' waivers before riding to help delegate responsibility to some other party if something were to happen. So, take this place for what it's worth. It's one of those things where you pay for what you get - and for the price, this was honestly not too bad. But again, it is to be expected. We were a large group - 7 people - and we road with three others, so 10 people all together. After speaking to us about our riding experiences, an old gentleman (probably the one who everyone said is rude) assigned us each a horse. He was an old horse rancher - customer service is not his business, horses are! He was rough around the edges, yes, but just doing his job. Once we all got horses, staff members (there were three) began bringing our horses out. One of the younger ranchers gave us a tutorial on how to ride - posture, where to keep your hands, how to steer, etc. After mounting our horse (again, with help from the staff), we 'practiced' for about 10 minutes, just going in circles around the ring. Then, the trail leader told us it was time to go on the trail. The trail is directly behind the ranch - in fact, you can see it at any given time. We had a trail leader out front, and one in the middle of us, continually calling out commands and advice, which we found super helpful. We road the trail for about an hour, and to be honest, an hour was plenty. The horses mostly moved in a line, one after another, but I do like to think I steered my horse (who's name was Chico) in some direction. The trail was a quite muddy and the horses did their job and went through the mud. Don't wear your best clothes, just an FYI! Wear old shoes (boots, if you got em) and pants that you won't mind getting dirty. Overall, we enjoyed our time at Muddy Water and accomplished what we came there to do - ride a horse on a trail!

my daughter in law stayed there and they were so upset with the animal's conditions . They were all…read moresick and starving. so glad to see someone finally took some action and pray the animals are in better care with food. The poor horses were skeletons and the flies were eating on them. I would recommend that they go into another type of business with no animal.