THE SOUND OF SILENCE

That was a fun side adventure! We headed back out onto the major road along the Steens Mountains & the Alvord Hot Springs, where we knew we’d get a nice soak. Little Stellita slept the whole way until we reached the springs, where we decided we better make some dinner.



I nursed her in the shade of the car while Topher got out the cooking aparati & Tasty Bites. The trusty little camping stove I bought in Joseph perfectly cooked up some grub & we headed out to the tin shack & Alvord Hot Springs for a nice evening soak while the sun set behind the mountains.




The spring comes out of the ground near the road & then trickles down where a series of pipes have been engineered to serve two separate pools, one hot, one REALLY hot. The cooler of the two pools was mostly enclosed with aluminum siding & there was a little changing area behind it for the more modest types. Although, in the entire hour or more that we were out there, we didn’t see a single soul on the road, or anywhere else, as far as the eye could see. Its kinda funny, hangin’ out on the side of the road wearing nothing but what you came into this world with, in a place so exposed, yet so isolated at the same time.
Multiple species of dragonflies bustled around us, hunting down their evening meal, some flies buzzed around occasionally, but other than that the loudest & most pronounced sound on the playa was the sound of silence. Its this sort of heavy pressing quiet all around you & the only thing you can really hear is how bad your ears ring from all those years playing in bands.
We went back and forth between the tubs while Stellita chilled in her carseat carrier. Topher figured out how to plug up the really hot one so it wasn’t quite so hot. If I had to guess I’d say it was probably in the high hundred & teens 116, 117 or so. The only other time I’ve been in a spring that hot was at Harbin Hot Springs, in the silent pool.



Really nice & relaxing.

We decided to take a drive up the road across from the springs & find a campsite overlooking the playa so we could soak again in the morning on the way out.

As the sun set, we came upon a nice little flat up the mountain a ways where Topher pitched the tent & I nursed our little girl into a deep sleep for the night.



The unrelenting quiet all around us coupled with the setting half moon on the horizon & the abundance of stars in the sky all made for quite a nice opportunity to do what else….surf the internet on our iPhones! Yes, that’s right, there was cell phone reception, & therefore internet access for the addicted iPhone user. Slow as it was, I did get to catch up on my good friends blog Malaysia Life: I missed a lot while we’ve been out of range! Sad but true, surfing the internet in such a beautiful place was pretty fun.

Nighty night!