This story of a family's true life adventures on a New Mexico ranch begins in the early 1940s when areas of the northern part of the state were still rugged and remote. Maggie Day Trigg and her family had exchanged the busy, crowded streets of California for the desolate arroyos of the high desert country. Soon they learned first-hand about rattlesnakes, flash floods, wild horses, kerosene lamps and "outdoor" plumbing. Share Maggie Day's frustration and amazement as she learns to cope with an enormous old stove and finds antiques along with TNT boxes in the thirty-two room former hotel she and her family were rehabilitating. And along the way, meet Gottschalk, the resident friendly ghost.