Leadore School has a different Spring Break than Salmon. Salmon always has a week off during the last full week of March, but Leadore has a short "First" Spring Break for 2 days during the first week of March, and then a "Second" Spring Break for 2 days surrounding Easter weekend. That makes it hard for 2 reasons: 1. My spring break is different than my children's so we can't all go somewhere together and 2. The beginning of March is still really cold, so nothing sounds appealing to do outside in the cold! However, I am on a quest to hit 100 Hot Springs in Idaho over a 3-year period, so I thought it was the perfect opportunity to hit up a few, and Josh was willing to go along with me, so we took a short trip to Southern Idaho for 2 days, and we both enjoyed ourselves immensely.
We left on Thursday, March 3 after Josh drove the morning bus route. We stopped at Gooding for lunch at a cute Mexican Restaurant and then checked into our cute cabin at Banbury Hot Springs near Buhl. I didn't realize it was so close to the golf course that we went to with the Oswald's last year in March! When we drove down the lane leading to the Hot Springs, Josh recognized the place from his youth. I had no idea he'd been there before! When he was young and his family lived in Hunt, they'd gone there several times to swim, and he recalled several memories that I'd never heard before, so that was fun!
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| This awesome mural was on the store across from the restaurant we ate lunch at in Gooding. |
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| The inside of our cute cabin at Banbury. We both loved it! |
After we checked in, we drove around the area, meandering through country roads and passed tons of large dairies (neither of us had seen so many large dairies congregated so close together; it felt like there was one on each mile-long block!). Our destination was Idaho's Balanced Rock west of Castleford. It was a short hike from the road up to the rock formations, and it was such a warm, beautiful day! There was only one other person hiking it at the same time as us, so it was peacefully quiet, too. Josh climbed all the way to the top, but I stopped right below the actual Balanced Rock. We both enjoyed the hike so much!
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| I thought it was so cool that the rock formation seemed to change, based on the angle of the view of it. It looked like a #7, a muscular animal's thigh, a chicken leg, a metal spike, and an upside-down giant's foot wearing a flip-flop sandal. |
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| This was my favorite view of it: as a giant's upside-down foot wearing a flip-flop sandal. |
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| He's always a faster hiker than me! |
One of the Hot Springs on my list was a natural one just a few miles from our hike. I'd read a few details about it, and how to get there, but we still had to search for it on foot. We drove to a parking area about a mile away from our recent hike, changed into some different clothes, and then began walking to where we thought it was. Josh and I both knew the general location, but we couldn't find it. I had given up, but right when I was walking back to the car, Josh found it: he said he just followed a trail of garbage to lead him to it. It was hidden behind some boulders by a hill that we weren't even canvasing when we first arrived. It was smaller than expected and much more shallow too, but the temperature of the pool was good, so we soaked our feet in it for about 20 minutes before we headed back to the car.
We picked up dinner at Subway and then drove back to our cabin at Banbury to eat it. I'd reserved a private hot pool soak that evening in a small cemented room with a view of the nearby river, which was a cool experience!
The next morning, we soaked in the large outdoor pool at Banbury. Josh has fond memories of the floating log from his youth, so he was glad to see it was still there. There was a senior citizen's water yoga class going on at the same time we soaked, so we went to the deep end to distance ourselves from where they were in the shallow end. We only swam and soaked for about 30 minutes, then we changed and checked out of our cabin and drove to Miracle Hot Springs which was only a few miles away. Apparently Banbury and Miracle are now owned by the same company, so since we booked lodging at Banbury, a soak at Miracle was included in our overnight accommodations. We also had a reservation for a private hot pool soak there. The private pool rooms are much smaller at Miracle, and there was a LOT more of them there than at Banbury. The water was also hotter, and although Miracle also has several larger pools, we didn't soak in them because we were all tired out from 2 soaks already that morning.
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| the large outdoor pool at Banbury with the floating log |
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| Some of the outdoor pools at Miracle |
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| Our private soaking room at Miracle |
After we left Miracle, we began driving north, but we only had one definitive plan for the day--Josh had a job interview at a golf course in Sun Valley later that afternoon. We had time to kill, so we decided to drive around the Hagerman Fossil Site which was along the Snake River. We wanted to go to the Visitor's Center in the town of Hagerman to see the largest fossil found in Idaho of the Hagerman Horse, but unfortunately they were closed, so instead we went to a cute shop that sold metal art and we bought 3 pieces to take home!
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| I bought the cute metal bike to go in the flower bed out back, the spinning hot air balloon to hang on the hook by our front door, & the Chevrolet tailgate to hang above the garage door. |
We randomly made two more stops on the drive, too: to look at some waterfalls near Hagerman that Josh remembered from his childhood, and the trailhead at the Black Magic Canyon that we were planning to visit last November, but then Josh got sick with the flu when we stayed at Bellevue and we changed our hiking plans. We still both plan to hike in that canyon in the future--the best time of year we heard was November or April.
When we arrived at the golf course in Sun Valley where Josh had an interview, I stayed in the car. He had a great interview and felt really good about it; he already knew the head Superintendent from being a member of Idaho GCSA for so many years, which helped him feel more confident about it, too. They offered him housing and a good pay with the job, and it was a good prospective position for him. We talked about me moving there in the summers and working on the crew that plants and weeds the flowerbeds on the course, too. It was a tempting proposition, and his favorite job proposal to date. He told them he would let them know his decision within 2 weeks. On the way home, we drove over Galena Summit, and stopped to eat dinner at the Mountain Village Restaurant in Stanley. It was so interesting because the previous day we'd hiked in beautiful, sunny, warm weather, and then as we approached Sun Valley, and all the way past Stanley, it was very cold and snowy! What a big weather change in locations just a couple hours apart from each other!
All in all, it was a fun adventure. I crossed 3 more hot springs off my list, we both saw parts of Idaho that we'd never seen before, we stayed in a cute cabin that gave us ideas about the future cabin we hope to own in the mountains someday, and we had aspirations and hopes for Josh's future job, too.
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