With a couple days off, we headed to Boise, to do a few hot springs up in the central forested part of the state. Our first stop was Roystone hot springs. Roystone is about 35 miles from Boise, which is the capital, the largest city and the commercial airport. We had reserved our soaking time at Roystone, in advance, which was for a 1.5-hour block for the hot springs hot tub. They also have a hot spring pool which is a little cooler 99 versus the hot tub which is 105. When we arrived, we were the only ones with a reservation so we had our first of 2 private soaks for the trip.
We just used the hot tub not the pool, there is extra charge to use both. There is also on site camping available. The water has a nice silky feel and is slightly alkaline. Reservations are required. You can learn more and book at https://roystonehotsprings.com/
Next, we headed north to the Boise national forest, and attempted to go to the Golden Fork hot spring, but a sign on the road to the spring said, it was closed for the day. We later learned that the owner passed away…… our condolences.
. We then decided to call it a day and went a little further north to the lakeside city of McCall. If you want to stay in a nice resort community, McCall is great with lots of lake side dining. We stayed in the Scandinavian style hotel called the Scandia Inn, which has modern rooms and nice extras like a Nordic outdoor sauna and firepits.
The next morning, we set out early for our quest to find and use one of the many remote wilderness hot springs. About 50 miles south of McCall, off on a twisty side road is Trail Creek hot spring. GPS will get you to a pull off on the side of the road where you park. It’s a short but very steep hike down the hill side to the trail creek. Right next to the creek is the hot spring, built from rocks and cement to create a pool where the hot water flows in. There is a pipe with a nozzle that you can use to control the inflow of cold stream which you’ll need because the hot water is around 120. Since it was only about 9am, we had the hot spring to ourselves, again…. for a while. These natural springs are beautiful, surrounded by the forest and mountains with no sign of civilization.
This spring gets pretty popular, so after awhile a family showed up which we enjoyed chatting with to learn about future Idaho springs to try our next trip.
