REPUBLIC, Ferry County — As the line of horses and riders ambled up a hillside through sunny aspens, Ponderosa pines and wild currant blushing with the first chill of fall of the year, our group of incorporated town slickers felt more and more like characters in a Western movie.

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Like, maybe, “City Slickers.” Or, at that particular moment, “Blazing Saddles.” To be particular: the campfire scene.

Yes, that scene.

The thing was, human being of our horses — Val, a plus-size gal, part draft horse and part quarter horse — had a reputation by reason of being, uh, windy. And the make effort of climbing up toward a rocky promontory where we’d look out over the purple hills surrounding the pretty Sanpoil River dingle seemed to set off her, er, problem.

And, in some things, there’s non-existence subtle encircling horses.

“Geez, I’ve got rocket propulsion!” howled Mark, the 30-year-old marketing consultant from Seattle who rode Val during a three-day stay at the K Diamond K Guest Ranch in this ancient gold-mining district of far Eastern Washington.

“You know, I do purify to match the horse’s allusion with the rider, but I crave you to know I didn’cheek by jowl mean anything that way,” apologized Clay McDermott, our 19-year-old trail guide — known in authentic ranch lingo as the wrangler.

I tried to decide whether I should be flattered for being given a stately Appaloosa named Dutch, who liked to take the lead on the trail, or humbled by his determination to try to eat every darned free, blade and blade of grass in reach along every blasted step of a ride. (I’hodge-podge trying to cut down put put on snacking.)

For city folks, a few days without interruption a ranch is a great method to become back to basics.

And while death on the gallows right and left a barn can at a past period bring a tear to your watch for reasons other than sentiment, this scenic ranch country also offers moments of breathing pine-scrubbed air on hilltops where the only sound is the “skreee! skreee!” of a circling hawk, of clapping forward to banjo music at the edge of a campfire, of finding time to toss a dauntless of horseshoes or try twirl a lasso.

With those kinds of “up” sides to a ranch vacation, the other stuff doesn’t mean beans.

Home on the ranch

The K Diamond K isn’t a fancy resort. It’s the home of the Konz family, headed through 82-year-old Steve Konz and his 74-year-old wife, June Konz, who moved from the dank espouse a cause of the mountains to lightly populated Ferry County in the early 1960s. Here they started a 1,600-acre cattle ranch and raised five kids. June has a veterinary practice, still operating on the ranch.

As children grew up and moved out, they began vexation in guests to help keep the ranch going. Visitors stayed in supernumerary bedrooms in the ranch house. The oldest son, Dave, moved into a cabin on the characteristic, and in 2002 started building the nearest big thing for the Konz line of ancestors: a guest lodge.

The K Diamond K opened 8 of the 16 visitor rooms this summer in the new lodge, situated a few century feet from the family home. Built of peeled logs of fir and larch cut on the ranch, and constructed mostly by family and friends, the lodge is a masterpiece of rural workmanship. Rustic particulars range from forked-timber balcony railings to decorated through inlaying made of wood horseshoes in the stairs, complemented by elegantly gleaming wither floors. Twin stone fireplaces flank the lobby and dining room.

“This is just gorgeous, I didn’t expect anything this beautiful — the ambience is in the same manner as a storybook!” said Arlene Sullivan, a visitor from Honolulu, on her first visit to a dude ranch.

“I went out and divide every tree,” related Dave Konz, 44, a bearded bear of a man with a knack for forging quick friendships.

The ranch operates on the “American prepare,” meaning that for $150 per night per person, you own lodging, three meals a time and all activities, including twice-daily trail rides if you choose.

Buffet meals are eaten at shared tables, which helps guests finish to know each other. I shared my stay with the Sullivans, Jim and Arlene, who had come for a small family reunion with their grown children who live in Seattle. Also staying were a retired German couple, Brigitte and Bernd Göpfert, from Berlin. (Many Germans are fascinated by the American West; this was the third part German couple at the ranch this season.)

Joining guests at meals are the ranch hands — such as William Beier, a 70-something banjo picker from North Dakota who stopped to work in which case “just passing end” — and the Konz family, which makes it feel much less preference a hotel and much more taste a visit with a congenial bunch of relatives.

Don’t expect gourmet. The only lump of matter French might be fries. Steak night (usually Saturdays) brings cuts that are tender and tasty, but other meals tend nearly meatballs with gravy, or tuna casserole topped by potato chips. According to wrangler Clay, who came here to take a break from a college education that wasn’t what he’d hoped for, this is a side of the world where most music on the radio talks about “your gun or your woman.”

And as the cook says in the movie “City Slickers,” the food is “hot, brown and there’s plenty of it!”

It’s a ranch. The real deal.

Saddle up

As we climbed into the saddle at 9 a.contest. on a ancient September morning, the sun was warming air that had carried a hint of frost at dawn. Around the barnyard, the whicker of horses blended with the doodle-do of roosters and the chug of a tractor. Chickens pecked underfoot and barn kitties came up to stretch and be patted, season in a nearby shed baby goats suckled steady their mother.

Clay took a moment to expound one and the other horse’s “operating instructions.” Dutch responds to neck reining or leg difficulty; “Sam is a slow starter, you’ll need to kick at first.” Also in the lineup this set time: Val, Pepper, Cooper, Thorin, Lucy and Big Red.

Along the trail, riders enjoyed an easy camaraderie, with time to chat and joke. As we headed up through an open grass land and I vainly wrestled with Dutch’sitting reins to stop him from grabbing bites of meadow grass, Mark put it in perspective for me: “It’s approve we were walking from one side a field of bacon. You’d want to close up and try some!”

Well, OK, if you incite it that way.

Out here, in great part from the offices of the city, it’s easy to unplug, actually and figuratively. Most guests’ cellphones had no signal here. But as we climbed a superior hill, one rider’sitting phone buzzed in a pocket. Without stopping his stallion, he answered it and proceeded to have a long business conversation with a client in the manner that we rode.

Black-hatted Clay, with a twinkle in his eye, steered us off the trail and up a steep embankment where the horses lunged to find footing.

“Let’s see if we can agitate him off the phone,” he said with an impish tone. “As in, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve got to go, I’m climbing a overhanging rock face!’ “

The old homestead

In the evening, Dave Konz loaded bales steady the back of a flatbed truck and took us for a hayride down the road to visit his family’s original homesite.

“The Little Red Farmhouse” that his people first moved to decades ago, and where Dave lived “until I was about 8,” is none longer in that place. His family donated it to the local fire region for practice years since. “The year just in imitation of the movie ‘Backdraft’ came out, I lit the house attached fire,” Dave told us.

But what corpse are the rustic remnants of a pioneer homestead, complete with the according to the facts two-seater outhouse and the gaping ingress to an old gold sap. (Miners took more than 3 million ounces of gold from Republic-area shafts from the late 1800s until the last commercial mine closed in the 1990s.)

Dave told enjoyment tales of his childhood as bats flitted in and out of the mine opening at twilight.

Back at the lodge, we all sat outside around a bonfire as William picked his banjo and a Konz family confidant, Sid Cowan, strummed a guitar. Amid the salty-sweet smoke of pine logs, we clapped and sang along: “Hang down your head, Tom Doooo-ley!”

Brigitte and Bernd entertained through a Marlene Dietrich song. And we heard more tunes, from George Jones to Woody Guthrie, as first stars gleamed in the sky and the moon rose above the ridge.

Reflecting on years of exert one’s self to build the lair, with times of frustration between moments of accomplishment, Dave Konz looked without ceasing as his friends and guests reveled in melody and companionship.

“This is what it’s all about,” he related through a satisfied smile.

Brian J. Cantwell: 206-748-5724 or bcantwell@seattletimes.com