Greetings! I’m writing from the Portland airport, where I have arrived unnecessarily early and am resolutely ignoring my large stack of ungraded midterms. This was the second-to-last Portland trip of my long-distance relationship; when I come back in June, it will be to join Clover on a cross-country road trip to move her to Philly. I truly can’t wait, and am plotting our route with glee.
This week, while I was here on my spring break, we took a shorter and very delightful road trip! I documented it on my Insta stories, so if you’re my IRL friend you have maybe seen some pics already. By the way, if I DON’T know you IRL, hello, thank you for reading! I am incredibly delighted to have you here.
I am a lifelong fan of soaking in hot water, so ever since I learned about Oregon’s trove of natural hot springs I’ve wanted to take a visit, but we hadn’t managed to fit in a trip to one yet. We plotted out a little road trip that would take us to three natural springs, plus one soaking pool - over four days we took a total of nine soaks! It was just the best, and I thought I’d write a little newsletter about it both to document a good damn time and to also offer some recommendations for if you find yourself in the position to drive around in the Pacific Northwest. Clover asked me what I was going to muse about in this post, and I was like, hmm, actually nothing! Just gonna tell ‘em what we did, no deep thoughts.
On Wednesday, we took off from Portland and drove about three hours southeast to Bigelow Hot Springs. The route there took us into the Santiam State Forest, surrounded by mountains, and we went from cool and misty Portland to mountain passes surrounded by four feet of snow piled on each side of the road. I began to doubt whether all of our plans for this trip were going to be thwarted by weather, but luckily my fears were unfounded. By the time we reached Bigelow, we’d descended a bit and there was just an inch or so of snow on the ground.
Bigelow is a tiny spring, just a five minute walk or so from a parking area off the side of a main road. We knew from Google that it’s more warm than hot in the winter/spring, so we weren’t sure that we’d be able to soak, but once we got there, we couldn’t resist. We had the place to ourselves (lucky, because the pool can’t fit more than maybe five people). The spring comes out of a little stone grotto that you can duck inside of, and it looks out over the McKenzie River. We were surrounded by moss-coated branches and dripping baby ferns. We soaked for almost two hours and it was completely magical.
After we dried off, we drove an hour and a half to Bend. We stopped in a town called Sisters, which Clover was obsessed with. I was mostly confused; it’s like a tiny tourist town with a hoakie/cute main steet, but it’s extremely in the middle of nowhere and also there was a shocking number of hot people there? A very beautiful girl at a coffee shop told us our outfits were amazing, but we were both wearing dumpy driving/hiking clothes? Weird place.
Bend is also a weird little town! On a March Wednesday night it was very dead, yet there were parked cars everywhere. It’s a hiking-skiing-fishing-beer town with 10,000 breweries. We stayed at a cheap motel and got surprisingly good tacos from a place with a Miami Beach club vibe located in the an old mill building that’d been converted into a bunch of breweries (surprise). We then went to a cider brewery that Clover’s nature bro manager had recommended. It was located in the same weird building. When we walked in, a British man was leading bingo night in the world’s boomingest voice. We played a game of pool, in which I was tragically defeated by Clover, only to find out that the bar closed at nine. Bend is not a late-night town. We went back to the motel and passed out to Antiques Roadshow.
The next day, we wandered around the town a little, ate at a diner full of senior citizens, and bought some books from a cute bookstore. Then we set off eastward into the high Oregon desert.
Some of the places we had wanted to go on Thursday wound up be inaccessible due to snow, but a cave outside Bend called Boyd Cave was open, so we went there. It’s part of a whole cave system, and you can walk out pretty far into complete darkness.
We then checked out another cave that was less cool, and then it was back to the highway. Unfortunately, the way back to the highway consisted of unpaved Forest Service roads that were potholed and muddy. We were in Clover’s glorious sky blue 2012 Toyota Corolla hybrid (she’ll get mad at me if I don’t say the whole thing), and these were roads fit for all-wheel drive at the least. I immediately became tense and terrified, imagining us getting stuck and stranded for hours with no phone service. Clover, luckily, kept her shit together and, after a false start descending down a narrow dirt road into a pool of sloppy mud that caused me to scream, we made it out alive and on to Route 20.
Our next stop was Crystal Crane Hot Springs in Crane, OR. Okay, listen up: this place rocks! It’s a hot springs “resort,” but it’s not super built up or fancy. We got a tiny little cabin for the night, which gave us unlimited access to the hot spring: a large pool, about five feet deep in the center, with a variety of hotter and cooler spots, waterfalls, jets, and areas to sit or lounge. It’s in the middle of open desert, and surrounded by gorgeous views of mesas, mountains, and buttes. We took a nice soak when we arrived, then paused to drive 25 minutes to the nearest store and make some pasta in the camp kitchen, then soaked for hours more under the stars. The next morning, we got up to watch the sun rise from the water. We also had some very sweet interactions with various other soakers of all ages; it’s a really friendly place! A grizzled older man told us to check out some springs in Nevada as he heated up some oily soup. A group of white-dreads types smiled at us bashfully when we walked in on them stoned in the camp kitchen. Clover learned the life story of the woman running their little coffee counter while I took a solo dip. I found that I really like the hot spring social norms. There’s no pressure to socialize, but most people are happy to chat a little about where they’re from or whatever, and perhaps recommend some other hot springs to you. Then you can drift away or zone out, no problem. Very soothing.
The next day, after our morning soak, we drove back to Bend. I had decided to splurge and book us a room at McMenamin’s for the night. McMenamin’s, if you don’t know, is an Oregon hospitality company that is quirked to the heavens. Their whole thing is buying old historical buildings and refurbishing them with the whimsy level turned up to 100, and turning them into hotels/restaurants/theaters/whatever. The Bend McMenamin’s has a legendary soaking pool that looks like THIS:
It was also Saint Patrick’s Day. Apparently, the Bend McMenamin’s is the littest place in all of central Oregon on Saint Pattie’s. I did not comprehend this when I made the decision to go there. We DID have fun, and I would NOT do it a second time. The place was absolutely packed to the gills with revelers, including lots of extended families. Everyone was white, and everyone was straight. The 100 different on-site bars all had lines twenty deep. The heterosexual energy was out of control. We had thought we might get drunk, but we didn’t. Instead, we spent a LOT of time in the soaking pool (which was not crowded at all - everyone was at the bars) and shared a cigar at the hotel’s cigar bar, which we loved. WOULD recommend staying at this McMenamin’s if you’re up for a little splurge (or just getting an hour pass to the soaking pool), would NOT recommend staying there on Saint Patrick’s Day.
The next day was the final day of our trip! After a morning soak (duh) we took off for Terwilliger hot springs to…soak. To get to Terwilliger, we drove along winding mountain roads that mildly triggered my fear of heights but provided some spectacular views. When we got to the spring, the parking lot was packed. A guy with a long white beard was directing foot traffic into the springs. It’s $10 per person for a two hour soak, and they allow fifty people at a time, which is fairly crowded! It’s a ten minute or so hike to the springs, and when you get there, there are four tiered pools. The top one is the hottest and the bottom is tepid to cool, so naturally the top two pools were packed.
The springs are BEAUTIFUL. You look out across a gorge and the vista is gorgeous. I’m sure it’s even lovelier in when the leaves are out! The scene there was…funny. At least half of the people there appeared to be friend groups of twenty-year-olds. The springs are clothing optional (so Clover and I were obviously naked) and there was a twenty-year-old girl next to us who kept taking off her bathing suit and then putting it back on. She was also engaged in some aggressive heterosexual canoodling with her naked boyfriend, who looked like he could be her fraternal twin.
We wound up soaking for the full two hours. On our way out, we crossed paths with a pack of four baby queers, who also looked to be about twenty years old. We had of course clocked them in the springs and sort of tried to say hi, but they were shy. As we left, we saw them taking pictures of each other by the sign for the springs and offered to take a picture of all four of them. They lit up and seemed so excited to chat with us, and one of them offered to take a pic of us, telling us (for the second time on that trip) that our outfits looked great, even though they were very normal.
As we drove away, we talked about how nice it felt to be perceived as cool older gays by the baby queers. I remember when I was that age, and any time I saw queer people who were a life stage ahead of me, I was so excited (and shy!). And this is still true! When I see older dykes, they are like celebrities to me. I’m always excited to be in their presence. To be regarded this way by younger people is a privilege and a delight. It’s one of the surprising pleasures of getting older.
At the end of our trip, I was tired of driving, but not tired of soaking! Never tired of that.
