Julie's Journal

Michael found this book at REI about a month ago, Touring California and Nevada Hot Springs by Matt C. Bischoff. After looking through it we decided that we must visit the Gold Strike Hot Springs that is only about 5 miles from our house.

After the long, and sometimes treacherous, hike we made it to the hot springs. We set up camp while the boyz immediately jumped in and enjoyed the hot water. Soon after they came back with the look of shock in their faces. Apparently the older couple that was setting up camp next to us had gotten completely naked and got into the hot springs. Their two young children, in swimming suits I might add, soon followed.

It was just too much for three pubescent boyz to grasp so they spent the rest of the trip basically hanging around our camp site which was blocked from the main pool by a large boulder.

Michael and I got in the springs, with swimsuits thankyouverymuch, and really did enjoy being in the middle of this canyon, with jetting rocks reaching hundreds of feet in the air surrounding us. The family was very nice and we soon forgot they were naked underneath the water.

We spent a good portion of the night in the hot springs and eventually decided to try it sans swimming suits after everyone was out of the pool and sound asleep in their tents. We put tea lights all around the rocky edge and it was very beautiful with the flickering candles and the moon above.

I didn’t sleep very good at all, and I have no idea why. The weather was perfect and all, but I just kept waking up all night long about every 30-40 minutes. The sun came up around 6:30 AM and we decided to just get up and stop fighting it. We were all sitting around our camp site eating bagels and cream cheese when this older man came running down the trail all smiling and happy. The other family was already enjoying the pool and he asked them if he could join them. They said sure, hop in! He stripped down naked and got in the water. Not to soon after that the hot springs was filled with naked people.

I looked at Micheal, he looked at me, and we looked at the boyz. All three of them said, it’s time to go mom. We packed up and hiked the two miles back to the car.

I bought a pedometer at Walmart on Friday night before our trip that I wore for the whole trip. According to it I made 18,210 steps that equaled out to 8.60 miles. It was set at a 30 inch stride, so I’m not sure how accurate that is for me. I didn’t notice I could change that until right now when I was searching for it so I could link it. My quads are really feeling it. The walking part of the trail was fine. It was the rock climbing that did my legs in.

Overall I had a really good time, I just wish the boyz would have enjoyed it more.

I hear a lot about how people think books are so much better than the internet, but in this case I would have to disagree. A little bit of searching online would have told me that this was an adult only destination, and a very popular past time for the nudist community.

As usual we took a lot of pictures and you can see them here in Julie’s Photo Gallery.

I found this at Amy’s and got to giggling so hard on some of the stories that I had to share it. Here is what you now have to do…

Assignment from your English teacher:

If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, (even if we don’t speak often or don’t really know each other) please post a comment with a COMPLETELY MADE UP AND FICTIONAL memory of you and me. It can be anything you want – good or bad – BUT IT HAS TO BE FAKE. When you’re finished, post this little paragraph on your blog and be surprised (or mortified) about what people DON’T ACTUALLY remember about you!

Post away – and be creative!

I stumbled upon some cool code tonight If you’re using the Google Toolbar in Internet Explorer you can add my blog to your custom buttons.

Come on!!! Add me

Do you want it for your Movable Type blog? You can find it here,

(You will need to tweak the xml output though…the ampersands in the URL’s need to be changed to & and you will need to retype the quotes in the XML declaration)

And for some more fun, you can encode your favicon.ico to base64 and replace the encoded string with the new one in the icon tag, so it’s a little more personal and pretty I’m such a girly girl.

Have fun geeks!

(*NOTE* yesssss, I had to download and install IE on my laptop to see how this worked. GO FIREFOX)