Oregon 07/2008 Asa Day 8

After a great morning of taking the waters, Asa and I forgo a vegetarian lunch and head into Detroit for a bacon cheese burger. Then we continue our travels through the mountains to Bagby Hot Springs.

The hike to the Springs is very nice, most of it follows this river.

Here is a small water fall were the trail crosses the river.

Once we get to the Springs, we check out some of the area. This is an old growth tree.

The trail up to the Springs is a gateway into a Wilderness Area and this is an Old Ranger Station that was a base of operations for this area.

Now, let's get to the soaks. Here is the source of one of the Hot Springs.

Hot water makes it way from this source to the main soaking area through a series of Rub Goldberg type canals and flumes.

For the modest, here is one of the private soaking spaces.
Hot water is feed through the flume and spigot at the back of the soaking log. You have to use buckets to bring cold water from the cistern in order to cool the water down to a comfortable soaking temperature.

Ahhh. This is one of the large red wood soaking tubs.

Notice the hot and cold running water to the left. There is a flume system to feed hot water and a cold water spring siphon too. Asa is using the cold water hose here. All of this without any electricity or pumps.

About a half mile down the trail is this water fall, which doubles as a shower for all the wilderness folk.

Asa is seeing how this natural shower works.

Well, our soaking done, we head toward Mount Hood.

We make it to the Timberline Lodge and have this view of the Cascades and Mount Jefferson.

This is the Timberline Lodge. If it looks familiar, it was the outside of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining with Jack Nicholson.

This is the big knocker on the front door of the Lodge.

This is the view of Mount Hood from the Lobby of the Timberline Lodge.

We dined here in the Cascade Dinning Room.

This is one of the many animal cravings one finds in the Lodge.

The Blue Ox Bar was not open.

The Lobby. We didn't spend the night here, as we had to catch a red-eye flight home in Portland, but we did enjoy our meal. We washed off the trail dust and got cleaned up for our trip home in the sauna area.

Asa all cleaned up at the back of the Timberline Lodge and about to head home.