I really cannot recommend this place. It’s history is fascinating but the present state is appalling.
When we arrived 2hrs after check-in time, there roof was leaking and the cleaning not finished. We stayed elsewhere the first night. When we came back the next day, the key we’d been given did not work (we were advised ‘to just not lock it’) and the entire place reeked of propane: apparently the cleaner had left the stove on, but since it was unvented the smell never quite cleared out. It rained the first week we stayed there, which clearly is not the hosts fault, but so much was dysfunctional that they should have addressed, from the broken door into the bathroom, the kitchenette sink faucet, the erratic internet and only occasionally working tv, the dumped compost at the front door, the cobwebs everywhere, the old bed linens, the junk and accumulated cigarette butts on the dilapidated patio with the non-working fireplace, and a “laundry room” that was stuffed with old clothes and mud. It took 24 hours for someone to refill the propane canister for the stove, after which the propane canister for the hot water also disappeared for a day.
As for the larger setting of the Ranch itself: it exemplifies nothing so much as “one man’s trash is another’s treasure”. With all due respect for Zorthian’s commitment to salvage art, today at the Ranch he established, the literal trash—as in overflowing garbage cans, broken down furniture, junked trailers and vehicles, and marauding pigs—overwhelms the remnants of art scattered about the place.
Anyone interested in staying here needs to see beyond the description: the road and bridge, for example, in spite of the hosts’ reassurances, are impassable and, as the sign at the entrance makes clear, “at risk of failure at any time”. It took me two days to find the much-vaunted “salt water pool” and nothing would have induced me to brave its detritus. More than a sense of art, history, or adventure, which is what attracted me to this place, visitors need to be sure that their tetanus is up-to-date.