LAVA HOT SPRINGS

For Spring break this year we decided to go to Idaho to a place called Lava Hot Springs for the weekend. As you can tell from the name, the town is famous for its natural hot springs. The native Indians were the original ones to discover them (probably to relax their muscles after a long day of chasing buffalo and rowdy kids). Eventually a small town was built around them, and now they are a tourist attraction. And when they say “hot”, they are not kidding either. The motel we stayed at had it’s own private hot springs pool that we got to use for free. It was 105 degrees. The public hot springs cost $5.00 per person, and they were about 109 degrees. For fear of melting our children, we decided to stay and play at our motel. It’s amazing how hot the water was. You couldn’t stay in it longer than a few minutes without having to get out and cool down. Our pool was right next to the river, so a couple times me and the boys went down and sat in the river to cool down. Kaden and I even put our heads completely under. The river water was from snow run-off, so it was pretty cold, but it didn’t seem that cold because we were so hot from the pool.

Kids by a hot spring

Caleb & Katelyn enjoying the hot water

Kristen and kids in pool

Boys getting ready to cool off in the river

Later, after swimming in the hot pool and playing in the river, we decided to go the community indoor pool to swim. It was a regular pool with normal temperatures, so it wasn’t so hot. But it did have diving boards, a basketball hoop, and a climbing wall that you could climb and then jump into the water--so the kids really wanted to go. It was a lot of fun also. I must say, however, I was afraid that gills and a fin were going to start growing out of my skin! I don’t think I’ve been in the water that much in the last 2 years combined. We were prunes!

Caleb climbing the wall

Carlan & Katelyn playing basketball

Kaden doing a flip off the diving board