Catching Some Soaks in Ketchum & Stanley

Josh and I took a day trip to Ketchum at the end of August for a hot springs venture. The weather was lovely, and we had a wonderful day exploring and soaking in 4 more hot springs on my Idaho Hot Springs Hit List. 

The first hot springs stop was called "Russian John". It's a natural pool, not too far off the west side of the highway north of Ketchum. It was in a field, with a short foot trail leading to it. The pool was nice and warm, and it had a log fence laying across one end. It was larger than it looks: when we arrived, there were 4 adults and a child in it, and there was still plenty of room for us to sit and soak with them for a while. After they left, we had it to ourselves for a few minutes before another couple came and joined us. We stayed for a little bit longer and then left to head to the next one. 

Our next stop was "Easley", a privately owned hot springs 20 miles north of Ketchum in the Sawtooth National Forest. They have a pool, two hot tubs, changing rooms, a store, and a campground. The location is owned by the Cathedral Pines Baptist church and is open seasonally. The water comes in from a natural source at 100 degrees. We swam in the pool for a couple of minutes, but there was a group of teens playing, so we decided to soak in the circular hot tub for the rest of our time instead. We soaked with a nice couple and their little girl. We had a relaxing time, and loved the surroundings!

The 3rd hot springs of the day was west of Ketchum, at a natural hot springs in the Warm Springs Creek called "Frenchman's Bend". There were a variety of hot pools along the creek. There was a bunch of people soaking at the time, since it's a pretty popular spot, so we originally picked a pool that was a little further upstream than the main soaking pools. After 20 minutes or so, we ventured downstream. We'd read about another hot springs source downstream from Frenchman's Bend, so we walked about a half mile to the other source. It was unfortunately on private property, and wasn't soak-able, so we retracted back to our original spot. By this time, the Frenchman's Bend pools weren't as populated, so we soaked in the larger main pool along with one other family with little kids, and it was really nice. We really liked it, and would go there again! . 

The first pools we soaked in.

The main pools were larger.

The final hot springs of the day was north of Stanley. It's another natural source called "Bonus" Hot Springs. I'd read about it in my research the previous summer, and we tried finding it last year, but were unsuccessful in locating it then. It's about 100 yards downstream the Salmon River from the Boat Box Hot Springs. However, we thought it was on the same side of the river as Boat Box, so we'd walked along the highway side of the water to locate it, but earlier this summer I saw some people who were floating the river that had stopped at it, and it was actually located across the river from the highway. We decided since the river was lower in August, it would be a good time to attempt forging it get to the hot springs. It was trickier to cross than it looked. Josh made it across easily, but since I'm shorter with smaller feet, my feet kept getting lodged in rocks along the river bottom, and the tide would weigh me down. I finally made it, though! The hot pools were pretty shallow, but we soaked in them for about 20-30 minutes, and enjoyed the sound of the nearby Salmon River. Afterwards, I used a different technique of swimming and floating back to the other side rather than trying to walk! 

The hot springs source came from the grassland and trickled
down to the hot pools adjacent to the river. 

We stopped for dinner at the Sawtooth Luce's restaurant in Stanley before heading home to Salmon. Neither of us had been there before, but I'd heard good things about the place. The dinner wasn't as good as I was expecting, though. However, we ran into Bill & Erin Blackadar and met their cute little boys while we were there. We'd recently met them on our float down the Middle Fork, so it was fun to randomly run into them again! 

I had a chickpea curry. I didn't really like the chickpea texture, though.

We had a great day, and loved our final summer adventure together. We enjoy seeing parts of Idaho that we've never been to before and soaking in new hot springs across the state!