After a lovely weekend with our friends in Bayfield, we stopped in Pagosa Springs on the way home. It is only about an hours drive North of their place, and is a pretty spa town on the San Juan River, and nestled at the base of the Continental Divide. These pictures are actually looking back on the town, at a lookout on the way out, but give an idea of how picturesque it is.
The town is renowned for it's sulphur springs, and their healing qualities, and also has the world's deepest geothermal hot spring, which feeds the pools hosted by three spas in town. The largest is at The Springs Resort, where we stopped for a few hours. This is the view from the side of the spa, and you can see the mineral build up behind Luke and Quinn, and the spa with all the pools and shelters, which then backs onto the river.
There are 23 soaking pools at the spa, ranging in temperature from 83 - 114F, or 27 - 46C. On some of the photos, you can see the temperatures on the sign, along with the name of the pools. The one below was the first pool we went in, The Aspen, which was 99F (37C). It was nice and warm, a bit like a bath.
The picture below, is of 'The Cliffs', which is a secluded pool. We had to cross over a boardwalk, across the 'Golden Pond' to get to it, but you are not allowed to swim in the pond. You can see the boys looking over the edge as there were heaps of goldfish and lilypads in the pond. The cliff formations behind Phil, have been created over many years, from the minerals in the water. This one was too hot for Quinn, and he just played on the stairs!
The pool below is called 'The Lobster Pot' and the boys and I put our foot in, but at 110F (43C), it was too hot for us to stay in. Phil wasn't in for very long either, after I took this photo!
Most of the pools were nicely finished with concrete, and usually a bench for you to sit in, in the water. The last pool we went in, was right down on the river, called The Burg, and it was squishy mud on the bottom, which was really gross! It was pretty warm though, and Phil and the boys had a dip in the spa, then went into the river, which is runoff from the snow - just to let you know that you are alive! As you can see from the sign below, they are not taking any responsibility for what goes on in the river, but there were people canoeing, tubing and rafting, so it was all fine!
The sun lounge was Quinn's spot for a lot of it - he was not a huge fan of the hot springs, but really enjoyed laying on the chairs around the place! Ryan declare the place smelly, which it was, but he did like the warm water. Luke like the Natural Mineral Pool best, which was an Olympic sized pool we swam in last, while Quinn soaked up some more rays by the pool! I think a lot of that was also due to the fact that we had had a pretty busy weekend, with some late nights, so Quinn was just tired!
We grabbed some lunch, and got on the road back to Castle Rock - we still had about a 6 hour drive ahead of us. On the way, we came across our first herd Bison, which I thought was very exciting. Phil didn't think it was very exciting, at the time, as I was driving, so I turned around and went back, and he had to go bush to get some photos of them! A bit of a beast of an animal though, and it is the mascot of the boy's school at Clear Sky Elementary. They get Bison Strong stickers, as part of their reward program.
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