Ritter Hot Springs

Our first day trip out of John Day was to Ritter Hot Springs. The drive there was amazing--open range fields as far as the eye could see, and driving through towns with one gas station and a post office.

It made us giddy driving through this area, I wanted to see a movie view of us from the air--the lone truck driving down the road.

 

When we got to the hot springs, our 11-year-old did not want to get out of the car. It looked too much like a shack, and she uttered something along the lines of "Dad, seriously. . . no. What, is there a water pipe and a kiddie pool out back?" 

We all thought about the same thing, but put on brave faces. (There have been a lot of times on this trip where we've said, "Come on, this will be fun!" when we really don't have a clue what we're getting ourselves into.)

This is the best angle of the hot springs hotel. We didn't stay there overnight, but it did look like they had a guest or two. 

To say that this place was laid back is an understatement. There was a jar to put your money in to pay, and the hostess (?) was sitting outside on a picnic table writing a letter. (It took a while for that to sink in--there were no cell or internet signals there, so really, letter writing was the only long-range communication option, other than a land line.) If you wanted treats, it was also on the honor system to put your money in the jar. 

There were four hot spring options here. The first was a regular swimming pool that had a hose from the hot spring filling it up. It was nice and warm, and had great canyon views. We had to ignore the algae on the bottom of the pool, but enjoyed having the place to ourselves.

There was also a hot tub, four scary individual (cinder block enclosures) hot tub rooms, and an outdoor shower. The outdoor shower was by far our favorite place. It looked rather creepy at first--like someone ripped out a shower from a mobile home and plonked it down by the river. You had to turn a pipe wrench to get the water flowing, but then it was a strong stream of hot spring water rushing over you as you looked out over the river. I'm glad we had the place to ourselves, as we really enjoyed hogging this up, and would have been sad to have to take more turns.

The outdoor shower is there at the end of the bridge on the right.

As we were showering and having cookies under a big leafy tree, one of the hotel guests pulled the mattress out of her room and flopped it on the wrap-around porch, and took a nap outside with her dog under an old quilt. Perfect day material, right?