I'm in love with road travel and have a lot of it under my belt. For three summers during my college years, I traveled across the country (by car and Ryder truck) to set up and run home repair mission trips with Group Cares. I can't think of a better experience for college students and because of that, I can say I've been to 41/50 states! All those summers on the road and yet the drive between Cortez, CO and Telluride along the San Juan Skyway and State Highway 145 might be my favorite. A steady climb to 8,750 along green meadows and the Dolores River, the drive alone is worth writing home about but along the way you might also stumble along some hidden treasures like we did: hot springs. Now I'm not going to share all our secrets. I recently read an article by Outside magazine posing the question, “Should we all be sharing the locations of the beautiful photos we share on social media, or should we withhold the locations in an effort to protect these fragile places and keep the outdoors a place of exploration and discovery?” It stuck with me. Social media, specifically Instagram, has connected us to a lot of incredible places. In fact, when we first moved to Flagstaff, Instagram was our go-to to find new places and things to do. The reason for my secrecy behind this local, unmarked watering hole is 1) to help preserve this seldom maintained pool and prevent the hordes of people just doing it "for the 'gram" and 2) because for the people that really want to find this place, take care of it and appreciate it, with a little research (Google) it's not all that hard to find after all. *Steps down from soapbox* Anyways, back to the hot springs. As a girl from the prairie, a place I love but with little geographic interest, this was my first hot springs experience. Our first attempt at finding them was a fail - there's actually two pools, one of which is unfortunately in decay, trashed and not much of a "hot" spring anymore but across the way we were lucky to spot the second pool which appears recently built and/or maintained and was literal heaven (once you get past the sulfur). We spent somewhere close to an hour soaking and enjoying the sounds of the river nearby and were lucky enough to have had the place to ourselves that entire time. If our Montana road trip later this summer goes as planned, we're hoping to visit two other hot springs in the next couple months. What are your favorite secret spots? You don't have to disclose the actual location of course ;)
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