We drove out to Spencer Hot Springs on the recommendation of our friend in Eureka, who had stumbled upon the place just a couple weeks earlier. The springs are down an unmarked dirt road, five miles off The Loneliest Road (Hwy 50).

The Eureka Museum. Pretty cool that these hundred year old newspapers were still plastered to the walls alongside the printing presses.

Eureka’s one and only grocery store—and ammo, and liquor, and caramel popcorn.

As we approached we spotted an RV of the $500 vintage that looked as if it had been sitting in place for a decade. We drove past it and started to go up a dirt track that quickly became terribly unsuitable for a 1966 27′ Dodge Travco. I stopped, climbed out, and went to scout ahead. As I walked around a bunch of bushes an old man wearing nothing but seventy years of all over tan stood up out of a puddle of water and waved. And then I remembered why we tend to avoid hot springs. Every single time we visit hot springs there are naked men involved.

“Park right over here! God has given us this bounty! Thank God for all of this beauty we are surrounded by!”

I smiled, waved, and walked back to the bus. “Umm, we need to find another hot spring.”

Fortunately there were three or four of them scattered around, and we found an only slightly four-by-four route up to another one where we could be God-less sinners by ourselves.

It is a beautiful spot, no doubt. Aside from a power line running down the dirt road into the mountains there is no sign of anything other than nature itself. “Our” hot spring had two pools, including a big one that we could regulate the flow of 165 degree water to, and get down to a nice warm bath temperature for the kids to play in.

What we didn’t realize is the beacon that our big blue bus would be. And also just how badly the internet has ruined these “discovered” places. Seems every single person on a road trip from Colorado to California had also discovered these hot springs thanks to Google.

The entire afternoon cars pulled in with C-plates and bypassed every single one of the hot springs in favor of the Blue Bus Hot Spring.

As night fell we were all alone again. Until eleven o’clock when two trucks full of drunks came barreling up the hill, parked ten feet from us like it was a Wal-Mart parking lot, and unloaded their coolers. Uggh. Sometimes I think we’re too old for this.

Fortunately the revelers were too old for this too, and within thirty minutes had loaded up and weaved their way back towards… who knows where? We’re in the middle of nowhere. Austin is the next town, fifteen miles away, with a population of a hundred and nothing.

I’m half-joking of course. It is a public lands hot springs after all. We had a good time playing in the water, chasing after jackrabbits, avoiding naked old men, and listening to the donkeys braying as they ate the green grass around the pools at dusk (even they went straight for the Blue Bus Hot Spring).