Ann Danielson is expecting a steady stream of visitors this summer to her alpaca ranch southeast of Longmont. The ranch is one of roughly 120 small businesses in Colorado that open up their property overnight to people camping in recreational vehicles in exchange for a little patronage.

This will be the third summer that Danielson, co-owner of Annie’s Alpaca Ranch, has participated in the program by Harvest Hosts, a Colorado-based company that coordinates with businesses across the country, listing more than 5,000 sites as potential stopovers. Campers pay Harvest Hosts an annual membership fee and agree to buy something or contribute in some way to the wineries, breweries, farms, roadside attractions and other locations that provide space for travelers.

Danielson sells products made with alpaca fiber in a small store next to her house at the ranch.

A colorful stuffed Alpaca toy is availlable inside the store at Annie’s Alpaca Ranch in Longmont, Colorado on June 4, 2024. The Alpaca Farm also allows campers and those with RVs to camp overnight and learn more about the animals at the ranch. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post)

“My first year, I didn’t have that many people. Last year, I had a lot and it’s starting to be a lot again this year,” Danielson said. “If i wanted, I could probably have somebody almost every day.”

Danielson uses an app to let people know when she’s willing to host campers and to keep in touch with guests about their arrival time, the kind of vehicle they’re driving and information about themselves.

Harvest Hosts has grown as more people are hitting the road. Travel by RV boomed in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic when many avoided air travel and staying in hotels. More than 11 million households own RVs, up 62% from 2001, according to the RV Industry Association’s website.

Post-pandemic, higher interest rates have been a speed bump for the industry, with sales falling significantly since 2021, but remaining above pre-pandemic levels, Reuters reported. The RV Industry Association said the median age of a first-time buyer dropped to 32 in 2022, down from  41 in 2020.

Harvest Hosts owner Joel Holland is part of the younger demographic that discovered the RV life. Now 39, he and his wife left the Washington, D.C., area when he was 30 and toured the country by motor home for two years.

“I had built a video tech company and was completely burned out. I was sick and tired of cubicles, concrete jungles and driving to work in traffic,” Holland said. “My wife and I didn’t have kids yet. We impulsively purchased an RV and just hit the road. The idea was, ‘Let’s just do the great American road trip until we get sick of it.’”

The couple loved the “proverbial wind in your hair, freedom of the open road,” but didn’t always enjoy the campgrounds. “You’re parked 5 feet away from another RV. The campgrounds are nothing special,” Holland said.

Other campers told Holland about Harvest Hosts, then a mom-and-pop business in Arizona. After settling in Vail, Holland offered to buy the company. He invested heavily in technology to grow the network of sites from around 600 to a few thousand. The majority of his 20 employees are in Colorado.

Annual memberships for campers range from about $84 to $143. The higher level comes with access to more sites. Hosts don’t pay anything. The company said it does background checks on the hosts.

Campers aren’t charged fees, but they’re encouraged to patronize hosts’ stores, restaurants or wineries. Holland said businesses report averaging $13,000 in additional yearly revenue from the overnight guests.

Treat it like your grandmother’s property

One of Harvest Hosts’ code of conduct is to treat the sites “like it’s your grandmother’s property,” Holland said.

“And No. 2 is support the business you visit,” Holland said. “These locations are letting you stay for free. Otherwise you’d be paying quite a lot of money.”

Harvest Hosts checks with businesses to track how things are going. The experience for Valley View Christian Church in Douglas County has been positive, lead pastor Phillip Holland said.

“Harvest Hosts reached out to us a few years ago looking for a location. It looked like something that could be a benefit to our community and to those that are traveling,” Holland said. “It’s not easy to reserve locations to place your camper and RV and it’s incredibly expensive.”

People staying on the property, which is south of Highlands Ranch, often make donations to the church. If they’re around on a Sunday morning, they usually attend the service.

“We are very blessed with the property and the facility that we have available to us,” Holland said. “Monetarily it’s not moving the needle for us, but it does increase awareness of our ministry and to me that’s a great thing.”

Campers must have self-contained vehicles. The hosts don’t provide hook-ups or other services. The stays are intended to be just overnight.

A blog posted by Cruise America, which rents and sells RVs, said a Harvest Hosts membership can quickly pay for itself, considering that campgrounds typically charge $30 and more per night. There are a variety of sites “away from the hustle and bustle of traditional campgrounds.”

However, the blog advises that campers can’t show up at a Harvest Hosts location unannounced. And the campsite surfaces might vary: from concrete to asphalt to gravel, dirt or grass.

The site at Annie’s Alpaca Ranch is a mix of gravel and grass near Danielson’s house and the animals’ pens. She lets people know that her driveway can’t handle some of the bigger rigs.

Two Alpaca look out towards the farmhouse belonging to Annie Danielson, owner of Annie’s Alpaca Ranch in Longmont, Colorado on June 4, 2024. The Alpaca Farm also allows campers and those with RVs to camp overnight and learn more about the animals at the ranch. RVing got big during the pandemic and is still one of the most popular pastimes. Harvest Hosts is a Vail-based company that coordinates with local businesses willing to host overnight campers. The campers must be able to take care of all their own needs: water, bathrooms. Campers are encouraged to patronize the businesses in return for the overnight parking. Harvest Hosts estimates most campers spend about $50 per stay. Harvest Hosts coordinates with local businesses willing to provide overnight parking for RV travelers. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post)

Many of Danielson’s guests like to mingle with the alpacas. Some will feed the animals grain pellets she puts out. The alpacas know that vans or RVs pulling up mean that treats are in store.

Danielson grew up on a cattle farm north of Ames, Iowa. She moved to the Denver area to work for an accounting firm, which closed in 2000. After visiting an alpaca farm and learning more about them, Danielson said she was “taken by the animals.”

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Danielson bought her first alpaca, which is smaller than a llama, in the summer of 2004 and bought the property near Longmont in December of that year. The herd has grown to 21 alpacas and two llamas, which ward off predators. She sells some of the fiber to a small mill in Utah and individuals and takes some of the animals to shows while still doing accounting work.

Based on her experience, Danielson said she would recommend the hosting gig to people who likes socializing. “I enjoy talking to people and knowing the story of where they’ve been, where they’re going.”

LOS ANGELES — The way the NFL can distribute its package of out-of-market games could be decided in federal court as the result of a class-action lawsuit.

Subscribers to the NFL’s “Sunday Ticket” package are claiming the league broke antitrust laws by selling its package of out-of-market Sunday afternoon games airing on CBS and Fox at what the lawsuit says was an inflated price. The subscribers also claim the league restricted competition by offering “Sunday Ticket” only on a satellite provider.

The NFL maintains it has the right to sell “Sunday Ticket” under its antitrust exemption for broadcasting. The plaintiffs say that only covers over-the-air broadcasts and not pay TV.

The case got underway on June 6 in Los Angeles.

How did this case get to trial?

The lawsuit was originally filed in 2015 by the Mucky Duck sports bar in San Francisco. On June 30, 2017, U.S. District Court Judge Beverly Reid O’Connell dismissed the lawsuit and ruled for the NFL because she said “Sunday Ticket” did not reduce output of NFL games and that even though DirecTV might have charged inflated prices, that did not “on its own, constitute harm to competition” because it had to negotiate with the NFL to carry the package.

Two years later, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over California and eight other states, reinstated the case. On Feb. 7, 2023, U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez ruled the case could proceed as a class action. Gutierrez on Jan. 12 rejected a final attempt by the NFL to dismiss the case.

Who are the plaintiffs?

The class action applies to more than 2.4 million residential subscribers and 48,000 businesses, mostly bars and restaurants, that purchased “NFL Sunday Ticket” from June 17, 2011, to Feb. 7, 2023. Google’s YouTube TV became the “Sunday Ticket” provider last season.

What are the chances of the NFL winning?

The NFL might be the king of American sports and one of the most powerful leagues in the world but it often loses in court, especially in Los Angeles. It was in an LA federal court in 1982 that a jury ruled the league violated antitrust rules by not allowing Al Davis to move the Raiders from Oakland to Los Angeles.

This is one of the rare times when a high-profile case for which league financial matters would become public has gone to court without the NFL first settling. In 2021, the league settled with St. Louis, St. Louis County and the St. Louis Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority for $790 million over the relocation of the Rams to Los Angeles.

Why is the NFL facing long odds?

According to memos presented by attorneys for the plaintiffs, Fox and CBS have always wanted the league to charge premium prices for “Sunday Ticket” so that it doesn’t eat into local ratings — the more subscribers to “Sunday Ticket,” the greater the threat to local audience numbers.

During opening statements, attorney Amanda Bonn showed a 2020 term sheet by Fox Sports demanding the NFL ensure “Sunday Ticket” would be priced above $293.96 per season.

When the “Sunday Ticket” contract was up for bid in 2022, ESPN wanted to offer the package on its streaming service for $70 per season along with offering a team-by-team product, according to an email shown by Bonn. That was rejected by the NFL.

How much could this cost the NFL?

If the NFL is found liable, a jury could award $7 billion in damages, but that number could balloon to $21 billion because antitrust cases can triple damages. Even if that happened, the NFL would appeal to the 9th Circuit and possibly the Supreme Court after that.

How can the NFL lower the price?

The NFL could offer a team-by-team “Sunday Ticket” package, something done by Major League Baseball and the NBA for its out-of-market packages, and actively market a weekly package if fans didn’t like games being shown in their area.

Because all the major leagues offer out-of-market packages, they are keeping an eye on this case since individual teams selling their out-of-market streaming rights, especially in baseball, would further separate the haves from the have nots.

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Kevin Costner was 23 in 1978, when he filmed his first feature, “Sizzle Beach, U.S.A.,” also known as “Malibu Hot Summer.” That’s one fact.

Another one: Kevin Costner looks right in a cowboy hat. There’s more to movie stardom than that, but with Costner, the hat may have had something to do with the stardom, which came a few years after “Sizzle Beach/Malibu,” which came from Troma, the trash-forward, money-optional film production company behind “Class of Nuke ’em High” and “Surf Nazis Must Die.”

Released in 1981, Costner’s debut feature follows three Los Angeles women, yearning for love, careers and meaning. The fifth-billed Costner plays the sole decent male in Southern California, a wealthy young stable owner sporting a cowboy hat. The hat has the added benefit of hiding the actor’s modified bowl haircut, which has not stood the test of time. But the actor has.

Ever since breaking through as the charismatic live wire Jake in his first real Western, director Lawrence Kasdan’s “Silverado” (1985), Costner has served as a genre ambassador and an advocate of the storytelling form. Now 69, he recently spent four increasingly contentious seasons on “Yellowstone,” settling scores and clearing the horizon of varmints anywhere near the Dutton ranch. Now, as producer, co-writer, director and marquee attraction, Costner’s the largely self-financed force behind a four-film gamble known as “Horizon: An American Saga,” set in the Civil War era.

Part One opens in theaters June 28. Costner and company return to theaters for the already filmed Part Two on Aug. 16. However these fare, he’s making two more. He has been filming Part Three for a while now. Like Costner’s own “Dances with Wolves” (1990), which won him Oscars for best director (first time out) and best picture, the script by Costner and Jon Baird devotes some acreage to First Nation characters and actors, though concentrating in the main on various groups of white men and women moving West.

Like the 1962 film that changed his young life, “Horizon” believes in an old-fashioned vision of the American pioneer spirit, without a lot of moral complication. Costner plays a loner and gunslinger, Hayes Ellison, who in Part One of “Horizon” takes on the role of protector of sex worker Marigold (Abbey Lee) and the newborn in her care. The filmmaker says he mortgaged his place in Santa Barbara to help finance the first two “Horizon” movies and their $100 million budget.

Early box office tracking data for “Horizon” hasn’t been great; same with the reviews coming out the film’s world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival last month. Costner and distributor Warner Bros. Pictures figure the project’s best hopes lie with audiences outside New York and Los Angeles. The pre-release push involved Costner’s promotional blitz with stops in Atlanta, Philadelphia and Dallas. For the Chicago regional junket, the studio flew in and put up TV, radio and some print and online journalists from Cleveland, Kansas City, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Detroit.

“I’ve got so much at risk on this,” he told me during our interview at the Western-themed Frontier restaurant on North Milwaukee Avenue.

The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: You were filming Part Three of “Horizon” just last week?

A: Two days ago, in fact. We called wrap on Saturday for a while, and we’ll come back to it in August. We were filming down in this incredible box canyon, the kind of landscape I love to set drama against. In Utah, out of St. George, about two hours north of Las Vegas. I’ll finish Part Three by the beginning of October. And then I’ll figure out how to make the fourth one.

Q: First time I saw you in a movie was “Silverado,” in 1985. I remember the audience really responding to what you were bringing to it, just the glee and the —

A: The juice! It was a flashy role, so it was good for me. I didn’t really know how to play it at first. I knew I’d make Westerns someday; somehow, in my own psyche, I just knew it. I figured I knew how to play the laconic Scott Glenn role, or one of those other roles. But this one, this kid was literally swinging on the bars (in a jail cell), just full of juice. At first I thought, god, I didn’t know how to do this. But I figured it out. I loved being in that movie.

I think Larry (Kasdan, the director, who cast Costner in “The Big Chill” but cut his part out of the final version) was a big foundation for me. The rehearsals he did, the room he afforded his actors, and how gracious he was with them. He’s such a skilled writer. Between him and (writer-director) Ron Shelton (“Bull Durham,” “Tin Cup”), there was a lot to appreciate just being around them. Quality people. Decent men, who happened to be great storytellers.

Q: And it was just three years after “Silverado” that you started thinking about what became “Horizon”?

A: Right, 1988. I actually commissioned the story through his brother, Mark Kasdan. He wrote the first version, called “Sidewinder.” And I liked it. And I couldn’t get anyone to make it. But (years later) I was working on it with a friend of mine, Jon Baird, who said he wanted to just keep writing. And he wrote four more.

There was something wrong about the first one. Not wrong, maybe, but originally the town of Horizon was already there at the start. I started to think about that, and the idea that all these towns in America started with somebody putting a stake in an ant hill and saying “This is mine.” On the frontier there was a lot at stake when somebody said that. So I thought: What if we explored how these towns came to be?

There’s been a lot of scripts I’ve liked that (took years to sell). I walked the street with Ron Shelton trying to sell “Bull Durham.” “Field of Dreams” was a really difficult movie to sell.

I’m about as mainstream as you can get. But I do believe in the nuances of subplot, and I try to invest in character. With “Horizon” what came to dominate, really, was the women in it. The more we wrote, the more central they became. But it doesn’t keep me from the action, or eliminate the gunfights.

Q: Let’s talk about “How the West Was Won” (1962), which is a big influence here.

A: That was the first time I fell in love with the West at the movies, starting with that opening image, and Spencer Tracy’s voice, and James Stewart dressed in skins. Not the Jimmy Stewart we knew. I remember that birch bark canoe with the tar. I was seven, and I was transported.

Q: Did you see it in Cinerama?

A: Yeah, at the Dome! (To note: The Hollywood Cinerama Dome theater is scheduled, after renovations, to reopen in 2025.) I was seven or eight. At the time my feet were dangling about this far off the chair (demonstrates, smiling). I didn’t leave for the intermission; I didn’t want anybody to take my seat. I was there for a little boy’s birthday party, but I was by myself. The other kids were fartin’ around, running around. I don’t think I left my seat.

Q: Your family moved a lot when you were that age, is that right?

A: My dad worked for Consolidated Edison. His family had lost everything in the Oklahoma Dust Bowl, just like “The Grapes of Wrath,” and they had to come to California. He had one job and never looked for any other opportunity because he was afraid that job might be taken from him.

We moved quite a bit, when I was in ninth, 10th, 11th, 12th grade. That was a difficult time for me. I think I started to lose a lot of confidence. Just trying to fit in, not being able to fit in. I had it better than a lot of kids, ‘cause I could play sports, so I could get on a team, find some friends. A little bit. But I was kind of undersized, and my brother was over in Vietnam. A complicated time for me.

Actor/producer Kevin Costner at Frontier restaurant in West Town on June 10, 2024.. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)

Q: Do you recall the first time you rode a horse?

A: Second or third grade. This kid I knew had a horse, and sometimes kids with horses just don’t want to ride them anymore. But I did, so I’d come over and ride. I remember being underneath trees, and I’d jump up and hook my arms under a tree limb and (hang there), hoping the horse would go by past me, and imagine the bad guys riding underneath me, and I’d whistle for my horse to come back. Of course he wouldn’t come back; he was a mean little horse. So that part of the movie in my head never happened for me. There I was, up in the tree, seven, eight years old, making stuff up. This was up in Santa Paula in Ventura County.

Q: How did you and your “Horizon” work together on the screenplays?

A: Well, Jon (Baird) is a bigger research guy than I am. I’m a human behavior guy. It just goes back and forth between us. I just put another sequence into Part Two when we filming Part Three (the other week), a five-scene sequence I felt was necessary. I wrote it, gave it to Jon, he did his thing to it, and we got what we wanted. Just trading back and forth. He’s the strength of our writing team; I round out a lot of things.

On “The Big Chill” and “Silverado,” we had anywhere between two and four weeks of rehearsal time. That’s just not a given anymore. All my other movies I’ve directed, I’ve tried to do two or three weeks of rehearsal because I believe so much in it. My actors in “Horizon” have not had that. “Horizon” we shot in 52 days. “Dances with Wolves,” we had 106 days. When I did “Wyatt Earp” with Larry (Kasdan), that was 113, 114 days. My dp (director of photography J. Michael Muro) couldn’t sit around waiting for perfect light. We just kept going.

Listen, I’ve got so much at risk on this. It’s the price you pay to do the story you want to do, if you believe in your connection to the audience. And yeah, I’d like to get my pile back. But not so much so that I’d want to spit on my life, and not do what I wanted to do.

“Horizon: An American Saga” opens in theaters June 28.

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

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