DC Newsletter

Caballeros, Amigos, and Nuevos,

Well, as promised, your Board of Directors is already hard at work on the next great ride of the Desert Caballeros. The ride date is April 7-11, 2025 so mark your calendars now to join us on an incredible five day adventure into the Sonoran Desert. Last year’s ride included 135 riders from all over the country. Please join us for this very special time. It’s a great time to see your old friends and make some new ones.

The Ride activities will start on Friday evening at our Back Patio Social at the Rancho Bar 7. There will be a cash bar with plenty of liquid refreshments to be had. All DC Ride members and their wives or sweethearts are welcome. I would like to encourage those Riders from past years who aren’t saddling up anymore to be sure to stop by and say hello to all your buddies. It’s a great place to get reacquainted and to start off our week.

Saturday night each individual Camp will host its own special party. Sunday morning the official Ride activities start with the golf tournament at Rancho de los Caballeros Golf Club. On Sunday evening, we will be hosting the El Presidente Party also at Rancho de los Caballeros. The party will start at 5:30 and will be accompanied by our Silent Auction. The Auction is an extremely important part of our Ride and provides valuable resources that we use to operate the Ride so feel free to bid for some of the great stuff on display.

The Ride will kick off at the Community Center in downtown Wickenburg on Monday morning at 11:00 a.m.. Be there with plenty of time to get your horse ready to go.

While on the Ride, we’ll have some great parties throughout the week. We’ll have the Shrimp and Avocado party, the Hawaiian party, the Margarita party and finally the Cheese Crisp event. We’ll have plenty of food and plenty of those liquid refreshments as well.

Speaking of food, this will be Mickey Houston’s 20th year catering our ride. Check out the Ride Menu button at the top of this page to see what a feast he will be providing for us. Thanks to Mickey for taking such great care of us throughout the years.

Our Ride will be a little different this year. Angel’s Flat will be our first camp. Our trail leader, Kevin Mallicoat thought it would be fun and different to change things around so that’s what we’ll do. Our second night will be at Cooper’s Ranch and the last will be Sayer’s Station. On the way to Sayer’s we will be riding over the crest of Seal Peak, something we haven’t done in twelve years. Should be spectacular.

We’ll stay at Cooper’s Ranch on Tuesday night and all day Wednesday. During the day Cooper’s will be full of activities. We will have a Duck Calcutta, the Duck Races, and a gymkhana, the Chicken Dance and the Tomahawk Throw, and we will follow up last year’s Cowboy Carnival, a shooting opportunity with revolvers and long guns, with some new contests and targets. It’ll be a great time.

Every year we have what we call Camp Cleanup. On March 13-16, 2025 your Directors and other Camp volunteers gather at Cooper’s for a couple of days of, yep, you guessed it, cleanup. It certainly is a bit of work but Mike Pollay and his guys are there to feed us and provide all the cold drinks you can consume. The campfires are fantastic as well. Last year we had over 20 guys helping out. Mark your calendars for this one as well. Would love to have you join us.

We’ll be riding back into Wickenburg on Friday and we will once again have our Picture party at the Desert Caballeros Western Museum that evening. Our photographer, Dave Darby, will have five days of pictures on display for us to look at and purchase. Dave does a great job and it’s always fun to see his camp and El Presidente party pictures.

To sum it all up, it’s gonna be a GREAT week.
Welcome everyone to the 2025 DC Ride.
Saludos cordiales,

DON LAWSON
El Presidente