Hot Water

Hot water that comes of of the ground is freakin amazing. I never cease to be fully amazed at the wonders of nature when I discover naturally created hot pools of water inviting me to soak. We’d planned to camp at a hot spring last night. (*at the time of writing - this post had to wait for internet access.)

I dropped the boys (ML and Mr.T) off to take a 60 mile bike ride and spent the next three hours wandering around the cutest little town. The plan was to follow the path that they took and meet up with them at a ranger station. The plan fell apart when the road turned from a paved one to a gravel one. I could see their tire tracks so I figured they persevered to follow the plan. There were a number of forks in the road and I did my best to guess which way to turn. Every so often I’d come across a sign that pointed in the direction of my destination.  I was concerned that I might be lost, and that I was no longer following the path that the boys took, and that no one would know where to come looking for me if something happened, but continued on my way.

And then, after at least an hour of driving and forking, the gravel road was blocked. Totally blocked. A big gravel mound with a few fallen trees. No possible way over or around it. Crap. 

Panic started to set in. Where the fuck was I? Why didn’t they leave me a sign? There was nothing for me to do but back up and go back. I had no idea how to go back, there had been so many forks in the road. I thought that they must have just continued over the roadblock and continued to our agreed upon destination. Even if I did find my way back to where I’d started from it would take me an extra three or four hours to get to the destination on an alternate path. 

I looked at the clock. It was already 8pm. It was going to get dark soon. crap. I came across another fork in the road. I had to pee. As I got back into the car I had that awful skin prickly feeling that I get when anxiety is taking over. I took some deep breaths and decided that all I could do at this point was commit to a different direction. There was a directional sign at this junction. I wrote a note with my name, the date, the time, and the direction that I was heading in, thinking that the boys must be at the destination realizing that was lost in the national forest and maybe getting ready to send a ranger out to look for me.  I tucked my note into the sign and continued on.

Long panicked story short, I left a few more notes, finally ended up back on a paved road that had an arrow drawn into it with charcoal. Turns out that there were a whole series of arrows at each succeeding junction, and that they were in fact left for me. At some point my phone beeped with a text message from ML. The boys knew I must be lost and were waiting for me at a pizza place in the nearest town. He told me that they left arrows for me. Not sure how the text came thru, because I still had no cell service. 

Finally, I was found. The boys were found. An hour after sitting close to ML I was feeling back to normal. We were no where near our planned destination. We got some dinner at a little diner and directions to a nearby campground. 

There is more to say here (about dinner), but it is for another post.

We found a beautiful national forest campground (blue pool) right along a river. Perfect. and in the morning our neighbors told us about a hot springs a mile up the road. it was beautiful. We made some breakfast, packed up camp, unloaded a mile down the road and spent the next hour soaking up the glorious natural hot water that was emerging from the ground in a perfect little pool right alongside the river.  

Our best laid plans went terribly array, yet we still managed to find exactly what we were  looking for all along. Beautiful.