I was actually crashing on a family visit of Brian's. His brother and sister-in-law were visiting from Brooklyn and had been touring around the area for a few days. The plan for today was to hang out, tour the area hot springs, and spend the night in a cabin with our own private hot spring. Since it was a misty, coudy, rainy day, it worked out perfectly.
Wow. First off, the driving was incredible. We went through South Slocan, Winlaw, Slocan, New Denver, and Nakusp. Most of these towns are lakeside, each lake just a gash in the mountains filled with water. And the mountains are steep. Brian kept pointing out that we couldn't even see the magnitude of the mountains -- the mist and clouds were hiding the even higher mountains behind and above the ones we were seeing.
As we passed through Winlaw, Brian briefed me on the marijuana economy of the area. "Probably one out of every three houses here (Winlaw) is a home-grower." I had already been told that you don't ask people what they do here, because they'll make stuff up. (I try not to do that anyway, because Miss Manners says you shouldn't.) That there are so many home-growers (who make a decent living without spending a lot of time doing it) means that there is a lot of volunteer labor for things like maintaining trails and hot springs and the arts, etc. The fact that the whole region is just so damn hard to get to means the people who live here all chose to live here, and so the place has a totally positive vibe. Anyhow, just an aside.
We bought some food, met up with Brian's brother and sister-in-law and went to St. Leon Hot Springs. That name makes it sound like a place you could find on a map, but actually it's a hot spring on a hillside above the St. Leon Creek that you get to by logging road (Google Maps has it as St. Leon Creek Rd), parking, and then hiking down a substantial hillside under cedars, fir, and spruce.
It was beautiful. We all agreed that what Vermont is really missing is a good hot spring in the woods.
This hot spring was a network of plastic pipes stuck into seeps on the hillside draining into pools made of rock and cement. You could juggle the pipes around to try and get a reasonable temperature. The main pool was hot tub (104ยบ) temperature. There was a hotter one that I didn't go into. It was raining through the trees, and cloudy, and other people came and went in two, threes, and fives. It was wonderful. We were there, in the sulfurous water, for four hours.
From there we trekked to dinner. The nearest food was at Halcyon Hot Springs, a fully-developed hot spring resort. Not necessarily ideal (resort restaurant), but it was late, we were tired, and the other alternatives were quite a ways away. We ate at the restaurant with a view of the lake and their hot springs (which just looked like a series of hotel swimming pools) and were glad that we had done it the way we had.
After dinner, we drove to Coyote Hot Springs, a primitive hot springs resort. The four of us stayed in a cabin with a sofa bed, with a private pool filled with hot spring (sulfur, again) water. The pool was meant for lounging and sitting, not swimming, which was perfect. One half was about two feet deep and the other half about three or four feet deep. I took the picture to the right the next day, in daylight, as we were leaving. They had already drained the pool in preparation for the next guests.Brian and I hung out in the water until quite late. We eventually crawled into our sleeping bags on the sofa bed and passed out.
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