Southern Idaho has Hot Springs

Sunday (Sep 4)

The weather was calm and sunny in the morning but 15 degrees colder! The large family was very busy milling around their four trucks by the time I took down my privacy screen and joined the outside world. They started leaving soon after, and by the time I went outside at 10:30-ish, they were all gone, not a trace of them.

I left around noon, and continued my counter-clockwise circumnavigation of the lake, heading north into Idaho. At the state line I passed the Idaho version of Bear Lake State Park I stayed in three years ago. It is slightly more upscale, nicer bathrooms and nicer sites. Not sure which one I prefer. It is FULL on Labor Day Sunday.

At the northeast corner of the lake I pass Bear Lake Hot Springs. I am always intrigued, but camping is quite expensive – $25 just to park in a field, hot springs NOT included. It’s really hopping today! I probably will stay here some day, but definitely not this in madhouse today.

The road veers left to cross the top of the lake, following the causeway with the Idaho State beach on my left and the marshes of the Bear Lake Wildlife Refuge (another place I will get to some day) on my right. I rejoin US 89 at St Charles ID and turn north.

I slowed but did not stop at the really very striking Mormon temple in Paris ID. Wasn’t feeling it today, I am ready to eat. I think my bad experience at Ouray NWR discouraged me from driving the 8 or so miles of gravel road to get to the Bear Lake Wildlife Refuge Auto Tour. I press on straight to Montpelier … where the only grocery store is closed for the holiday – really!?!?!  Since I can’t stock up on food items, I do the two things I always do here – a walk-through on the Oregon Trail Visitors Center, then across the highway to the good ole reliable Arctic Circle for passable food and good wifi. If there were more choices in Montpelier I probably would never have even tried the Arctic Circle, just another fast food dump after all, but it turns out to hit the spot and fulfill all my needs quite nicely!

I am feeling pretty low energy today. I think it’s the change in the weather, but come to think of it I’ve felt the same kind of “blah” way the other times I’ve passed through here, so maybe there’s some kind of negative energy vortex here :-|

Anyway, onward, north to Soda Springs. A few nights out of town I passed that awful truck stop from last time. They appear to be out of business. They deserve it, they were fer sure mailing it in last time.

Soda Springs, as you may or may not know, has a geyser that does its thing every hour on the hour! I chose not to hang around to see it last time, so I kinda wanted to see it this time. Success! I parked, walked up the little travertine hill just in time to see it blow.   Very entertaining.

Tonight’s fun time destination is Lava Hot Springs. Not my favorite to be here on Labor Day Weekend, but here I am nonetheless. There is a nice campground along the river, but it is like $30/noght, so I am going to try a new place a little out of town but cheaper.

As noted in the description I was mildly outraged by the lack of services when I got here, but looking back the place served it’s purpose very well – that purpose being an almost reasonably priced place to sleep convenient to the hot springs.

I got to my spot and chilled for a while. It is noticeably colder this afternoon than yesterday. I’m not really feeling that stoked about hitting the hot tubs …  still pretty low energy. So I step back and have a very pleasant, restorative nap before mustering off to soak.

Oh that was fun! I feel great now! Easy little three minute drive back to the campground, eventually identify my site in the pitch darkness and chill out for the evening. I’m still pretty jazzed – the opposite of my low energy self of four hours ago -so I stay up for a while. Long enough to experience one of the hundred car freight trains that rumble through here every few hours. I’m glad I will be able to shut the van door on those later.

Monday

Beautiful morning here at the campground. It’s Labor Day, the last day of summer. The grown-ups are packing up and getting the fifth wheelers un-chocked and hooked up and ready to roll. The little kids are roving in packs, exploring and burning energy before they get belted in for the ride back to ole, boring home. My site is on the edge of the mowed field, so the kid-pack spends quite a long time in the view from my van, chasing bunnies that munch on the lawn for while then hop back into the tall grass when the kids get near. Lot of excitement!

Time to leave, back to Lava Hot Springs, I thought I was just going to go up into the garden area about the hot springs and take pictures, but for $7.50 why not have another soak? I’m not sorry I did, but it wasn’t really that great for me. The pools that were perfect last evening were uncomfortable in the hot sunlight. More worrisome was that I would get lightheaded every time I would step out of a pool. Lightheadedness is just part of my beta-blocked existence, but this was more pronounced than usual. I decided I should maybe take it easy, so I chilled out on a bench and soaked up the beautiful surroundings for a while, then hit the showers and left, to get on with my day.

I know from last time that the food options in LHS are pitifully limited, so getting on with this particular day entails driving to Pocatello and finding a coffee/wifi place open on the holiday. Fifth St Bagels was open and whipped me up a lox bagel that got me on the path to feeling good.

Pocatello has the first decent grocery stores I’ve seen since the Salt Lake megapolis four days ago. I had a grand ole time at the Albertson’s buying too much food.

Thence to the hidden gem of:

I really enjoyed this little place last time on a gloomy, rainy day in October and it was even nicer on a sunny, cold day in September. There’s nobody here and the road is dry, so I got the best spot. I could have gotten it last time also, but I was afraid to drive down short but very steep muddy road, so I just parked in the main lot. This is nicer. I’m looking right at a bend in the Snake River. Very buggy down here, but really pretty.

Gosh this is a perfect spot. The van is facing straight onto some rapids on the Snake River, so when the cold drove me inside I could sit in the driver’s seat and watch the show, including moonset over the river.

Tuesday

Beautiful here in the morning also. The little road down to this site is a loop, but I really do not like the size of those ruts, so I “K-turned” my way into facing the other direction and returned as I came. Getting stuck would be a drag. 

A few miles down I-86 is a rest area, that must really call to me, because once I got there I realized I stopped here last time, when I was going the other direction. It’s an Oregon Trail commemorative site. There is a little paved path where you can follow the trail for quite a ways. Exactly as last time I follow it only a short ways, until it crosses under the interstate via a tunnel.

Back on I-86, which is a very short interstate, only a connector from I-84 to I-15. After it becomes I-84 I get off at Burley. I get my coffee and wifi at a little coffee shop downtown, then follow US 30 through the rich farming country that follows the Snake around here.

By the time I got to Twin Falls, I was ready to eat. Did not have great luck. The place that sounded perfect on Yelp had closed for the day. I ended up at a little sandwich shop in a converted fast food restaurant. Not much in the way of ambiance, but my steak wrap was pretty tasty. This time I did not check out the the sights of Twin Falls. Neither Shoshone Falls, which I enjoyed last time or that very dramatic bridge over the canyon of the Snake, I just pressed on on US 30, heading for my hot springs for the evening.

Miracle Hot Springs is perfect little gem of a place to soak, but the campground is kind of low-rent trailer park-y. It also lives in infamy as the place where I got the plague of flies in my van last time.

Last time through the competing hot springs across the road was closed for the season, but since then it has been bought by Miracle, so it’s open and part of the same operation. I decide to check out their camping first, and that was a great choice, because their camping is just delightful – a large grassy field with trees around the edges where I just pull my van in next to a picnic table and chill.

My assigned site was not very level, so I moved over a few to one that was. After that is was a question of where to soak? Banbury did not nearly as inviting as Miracle, so I hopped in the van and drove the 3 or so miles across the highway to there.

It was just effing awesome again! My tough decision is whether to enjoy sunset at Miracle and have to drive back and, park in the dark or leave now and enjoy sunset at the campground. I went for option 2, worked out fine.

After sunset I walked over to try out the Banbury pool. There are private tubs, but the main deal is a gigantic concrete rectangular pool. There is a diving board at the deep end, and this cool rolling log thing that is part of the divider between deep and shallow. The water is pretty warm. The water pouring in from a 4 inch pipe is f***ing hot!  140° the dude said!  So hot there are a couple of cold pipes around it.  It’s not nearly as pleasant and well laid out as Miracle, but a great place to grab a floatie or two and just chill.