Editor's note: This was an advertiser-supported article that appeared in the Essential Park Guide, Fall 2015.

It was a beautiful late summer evening, and my family and I had spent the day hiking in Badlands National Park. As the setting sun cast a golden glow on the park’s signature peaks and plateaus, my family and I pulled into a nearby guest ranch, where we had booked a cabin for the night.

Our Badlands adventure came halfway through a cross-country road trip that included stops at some of the most iconic national parks of the West, including Yellowstone and Grand Teton. We knew we wanted to enhance the experience by choosing accommodations that captured the true spirit of the West while also offering fun activities. A guest ranch, also known as a dude ranch, perfectly fit the bill. Although we were just passing through, we enjoyed the comfortable furnishings in our rustic cabin, where we could watch cattle grazing against the panoramic backdrop of the Badlands. Our favorite part was heading up to the main house to share a hearty cowboy breakfast alongside our fellow guests, including heaping piles of scrambled eggs and freshly made biscuits and jam. Afterwards, our kids headed outside to feed the resident burros and chickens. We felt thoroughly at home.

Dude ranches can be found throughout the West, bringing you close to the national parks while offering additional outdoor experiences such as horseback riding, fishing, hiking, zip-lining, and more. Travelers can make new friends with other guests around a campfire or on a horseback ride, or they choose to read, paint, or write in solitude. Private cabins or rustic rooms, filled with warm and welcoming furnishings, help you kick back and unwind. Most ranches offer all-inclusive package vacations, making your stay easy and fulfilling.

The following dude ranches stretch from Montana to California and are within easy driving distances of national parks. All are members of the Dude Ranchers Association, which has been holding its members to a high standard of hospitality since 1926. You can be assured that any one of these facilities will provide a Western experience that is comfortable, authentic, memorable and fun.

Arizona Dude Ranches

When you visit the Stagecoach Trails Guest Ranch, it feels as if you’re stepping into the past. Located in the Mojave Desert of northwest Arizona, the ranch has the feel of an old Western town. The ranch borders more than 360,000 acres of desert landscape, dotted with Joshua trees and ringed by the Mohave and Hualapai mountains. As with most dude ranches, horseback riding is the most popular activity, but travelers can enjoy a range of evening entertainments, too, including cowboy singers, campfire talks, and line dancing. Or you could opt to sink into a comfy armchair by the fireplace in the ranch’s Frontier Lodge. Grand Canyon National Park is only 2.5 hours away.

On the southern end of the state, the White Stallion Ranch in Tucson has attracted both tourists and Hollywood filmmakers for 75 years. Several movies and TV shows, including Arizona (1936) and High Chaparral (1968-72) as well as more recent science and nature programs, have been filmed here. You can tour the surrounding desert by horseback by day (the ranch offers both slow rides and fast rides, as well as specialty rides such as “wine and cheese” trips) and relax by night in your Spanishstyle casita. The ranch is only minutes from Saguaro National Park, known for its majestic namesake cactus that is a widely recognized symbol of the West.

California Dude Ranches

Nestled on the banks of the Klamath National Wild and Scenic River, in the green mountains of northern California, sits the scenic Marble Mountain Ranch. This dude ranch, which has been in operation for more than 45 years, treats its guests to signature “saddle and paddle” vacations combining horseback riding and river rafting for all experience levels. The kids in the family will be treated to a summer camp-like atmosphere that will get them off their screens and into nature. The ranch is not far from the Marble Mountain Wilderness Area and a stay here could be combined with a trip to Redwood National and State Parks along the coast.

Western history and stunning scenery combine at the Hunewill Circle H Guest Ranch located not far east of Yosemite National Park in central California’s Bridgeport Valley. The ranch dates to 1861 and has served as a guest ranch since the 1930s. After a hearty breakfast, enjoy a horseback ride through lush meadows, with the Sierra Nevada in the distance, and then kick up your heels at an evening dance or talent show. If you’re not in the mood for a trail ride, channel your inner cowboy and help drive the cattle, or fish for trout in a nearby river or stream.

Combine a stay at the C Lazy U Ranch with a visit to Rocky Mountain National Park/C Lazy U

Colorado Dude Ranches

For sheer grandeur, few mountain ranges can compare to the Colorado Rockies. Located only an hour north of Denver and an hour east of Rocky Mountain National Park, Sylvan Dale Guest Ranch is ideally situated for a fun and fulfilling dude ranch vacation that capitalizes on the stunning Rocky Mountain landscape. Horseback rides are tailored for every level and interest, whether you explore the old wagon trails on Alexander Mountain or take a rockier ride up Eagle Ridge. Sylvan Dale raises most of its own horses right on the ranch. Plan an early summer visit and newly minted ranch hands can help drive the cattle herd when it is moved to its summer range. Other special events include “adults only” weeks and healthy living retreats.

The C Lazy U Ranch, located to the west of the national park, offers a full resort experience, cowboy-style. In addition to horseback riding, you can treat yourself to a massage, facial, manicure/pedicure, or the ranch’s signature “Cowboy Soak,” a relaxing moonlit soak in deep copper tubs overlooking the creek, with a side order of champagne and strawberries. The staggering list of available activities includes hiking, archery, tennis, a ropes course and zip-line, arts and crafts, and even panning for gold.

For many people, being in nature is a spiritual experience, and the Wind River Christian Guest Ranch understands that feeling completely. Located in Estes Park along the eastern border of Rocky Mountain National Park, this ranch offers all the horseback riding, outdoor activities, and relaxation you’d want in a dude ranch vacation, as well as spiritual elements, such as daily bible study, to fill your soul.

Montana Dude Ranches

After touring Glacier National Park, famous for its rugged peaks, alpine lakes, and the jaw-dropping Going-to-the-Sun Road, the Bar W Guest Ranch is the perfect place to extend your big-sky Montana adventure with horseback riding, hiking, and more. Perched on the edge of Spencer Lake just beyond the western border of the park, the Bar W offers guests three lodging choices—rooms in the traditional Western lodge (which includes common areas and a game parlor), rustic cabin suites, or one of its two “Glamping” tents, which include a private bath and are the opposite of “roughing it.”

Located just 90 miles to the south of Glacier is the Deep Canyon Guest Ranch. Stay in either the rustic Guest Lodge or in one of three private duplex cabins, whose front porches are perfect for unwinding after an active day out on the trails. Here, to paraphrase author Norman Maclean, a river truly does run through it, namely the North Fork of the Teton River. The river is only a short walk from the ranch and a frequent destination for fly fishermen (and women) searching for some native cutthroat trout. Horseback riding and hiking round out the ranch’s most popular offerings.

Generations of Montana ranching tradition are embodied at the Sweet Grass Ranch, which dates to 1880. In true dude ranch fashion, horseback riding is the main event here, but guests can also take a dip in Sweet Grass Creek. Another nearby creek even includes a natural water slide that feeds right into the Sweet Grass. For road-trippers, it’s only a 2.5-hour drive to the northern entrance to Yellowstone and its geyser basins, waterfalls, and wildlife-filled valleys.

New Mexico Dude Ranch

Serenity is the name of the game at the Geronimo Trail Guest Ranch, hidden away amid stands of Ponderosa pines in the Black Range Mountains of southwest New Mexico. You’ll want to turn off your cell phones (you won’t get coverage anyway) and unplug from the pressures of everyday life with a long horseback ride or hike, or a book borrowed from the ranch library. The ranch is located on the Geronimo Trail, a New Mexico scenic byway, in the Gila National.

Wyoming Dude Ranches  

Wyoming is known for its incredible scenery and natural wonders, especially in such places as Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks and Devils Tower National Monument. Yet Wyoming also has a plethora of dude ranches that offer adventurous new ways to experience this ruggedly beautiful state.

In northern Wyoming, Bighorn National Forest is centrally located between Devils Tower and Yellowstone and encompasses more than 1.1 million acres in one of the oldest federally protected forests. Located just west of Bighorn National Forest, the Hideout Lodge & Guest Ranch is an upscale working ranch that features cattle drives, horseback rides, fly-fishing and more for a clientele that is limited to only 25 people at a time. Accommodations include Western-themed cabins and luxe log homes with every amenity.

Also in the shadow of Bighorn National Forest lies the Red Reflet Guest Ranch, a working cattle ranch and resort set in a landscape that changes from red rimrock and limestone canyons to alpine forests and mountain meadows. Along with horseback riding and cattle herding, visitors can get dusty on their mountain bikes or ATVs, try their hand at zip-lining or riflery, or relax with a dip in the pool.

To the east of Grand Teton lies one of the oldest dude ranches in the country— the CM Ranch—which dates to 1927 and is included on the National Register of Historic Places. Stunning red sandstone formations and tree-covered mountains surround the ranch, which is contiguous with the Shoshone National Forest, allowing guests to tailor their horseback rides, fishing trips, and hikes in countless ways depending on how far they want to go. Those who want to stay back at the ranch can look forward to card games or ping-pong, a weekly slide show by the ranch’s on-site photographer, or cowboy poetry and music. Accommodations include log cabins along Jakey’s Fork, a tributary of the Wind River. Anglers can try for brook, rainbow, and brown trout while they’re there, too.

Goosewing Ranch is located in Jackson Hole, the famous southern gateway to Grand Teton. This dude ranch, which features a main lodge and private guest cabins, places a strong focus on sustainability, recycling, and reuse, whether that means giving guests reusable water bottles, composting on site, or harvesting timber from downed trees for ranch projects. In addition to horseback riding day trips, you can opt for multinight pack trips, where riders camp high in the mountains for one or two nights, before spending the rest of the trip unwinding back at the ranch.

Fall, winter, spring, or summer, dude ranches let you sample the West in all its glory in a fashion as embracing or flexible as you desire.

The Tetons and their national park are always within sight at the Goosewing Ranch in Wyoming/Goosewing Ranch