Dan and Michele Gross

As is happening all too often lately, a friend suddenly died. She was the younger sister of one of my best friends and nobody could make me laugh like she could. But what I am most grateful for is the Summer of 1975. She was living on a dude ranch(a real one) in Jackson Hole Wyoming(while this area still had unspoiled beauty without gated developments and the only celebrity that live there was Robert Goulet). Her sister and I went to visit and stayed a couple of weeks and we went horseback riding through the foothills, drove up to Montana and Yellowstone Park, went whitewater rafting down the Snake River, and found a crystal clear lake in a Mountain Range called Gros Ventre where we swam in our underwear. She took us to the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar where real cowboys danced with you and then called you "little darlin" and drove us to bars so far into the mountains that real cowboys were there on horses. It was a wonderful time in my life and whenever we would get together in recent years, we always said we were going back to Jackson Hole and find that Dude Ranch. Sadly, that will never happen.