A couple years back I drove from Vegas to Yosemite. Due to a road closure we had to take a 4 hour detour. We had this colourful van from Escape Campervans, and every night looked at freecampsites.net to find a free place to sleep. Nice adventures.
That night around 8pm we drove to a random pick, called Willy's Hot Springs, very tired and hungry. We had no idea what it was and had never been to a hot springs. After confirming we could stay there, we drove for dinner and a beer at Mammoth. When we got back, we were curious and went along the wooden path to see the hot springs.
It was around midnight, there was no moon and 0 light pollution. It was magical. You sit in the cold night in natural hot water, in the middle of pretty barren country. There's all the stars and the milky way. Then all of a sudden it got pretty bright. The moon rose over the horizon. It was the first and only moonrise I've ever seen.
This was the most magical night in nature I've ever experienced. A friend of mine said "oh, Willy's Hot Springs, I've been there too, it was kind of mid." I think we experience the world in different ways.
I think it's funny that the volcanic fumaroles are listed. On one hand, yes, they're certainly active geothermal sites. On the other hand, the page is tailored to hot springs.
Average temp: 250F above ambient. Status: Open for soaking. Note: Please don't soak.
I have a bit of an obsession with trying to find hot springs. Washington state, for all of its mountains, is relatively devoid of hot springs. I feel like there must be some that remain unknown. I'd like to someday use a thermal camera on a drone of some kind to try and find one :) Maybe go along fault lines that have other hot springs?
Hey Armen how accurate is this? That’s a lot of spots to research. I read a bit about your process but you aren’t physically verifying in person so still room for significant error? Pretty cool / helpful though still, thank you!
Same here. I wouldn't go traipsing through the woods looking for a spring at a set of coordinates without first finding out who the landowner is and contacting them for permission. (If it's not public land.)
In one case I found, the USGS point for the spring is on public land, but the actual spring is on a private inholding. This, of course, led to an error that caused the site to list it as "public."
I think it's missing some. There are a couple of hotsprings off the highway between Ventura and Ojai. They're 'wild' and completely natural - you can make your own pools using rocks and sand for dams. I saw Steven Spielberg once when I was there with a few people - he was reminiscing with another guy about the problems they had filming something...
Edit: I think it was empire of the sun. They were talking about how difficult it was to film explosions in Japan.
Maybe you’re thinking of Letters from Iwo Jima? They shot on location but the island is basically a mass war grave so they couldn’t use much pyrotechnics to avoid disturbing the ground.
Empire of the Sun was mostly shot in Shanghai and Spain. That was the one where they got fined for burning old tires for the special effect smoke, which dumped a bunch of toxic smoke on Shanghai.
Sad to see how lacking the East Coast is in hotsprings…
The "Best Time to Visit" thing needs more stringent criteria. It lists "midwinter" for both the listings in NY and in MA, presumably for the biggest temperature differential. Unfortunately, the springs are "well below bath temperature" and it will be literally freezing outside in January.
Thanks to the DOGE/Trump goverment cutbacks, the previous government listed data was pulled offline. I've got a full copy of the data (much of it is out of date), but I haven't had the time to build a site and put it online. Might get around to it at some point. I'll probably reach out to the guy running the site and see if he wants the data.
Why not post it on github? Because federal government data cannot be copyrighted, anyone is free to copy, redistribute, mirror, modify, or publish it anywhere they choose.
ok, now do the rest of the world, and add layers for cold springs, artesian sources, mineral waters, salt, other, and drop it on OSM
best one I ever saw(was in) was somewhere in
oregon, inland , vast vocanic pumice plains with pine trees, and an intensly cold spiring comming up in a head pond strong enough to create a big dome of water you can swim into and freeze your ass of, and then get out in a hot desert.
our planet has a bunch of awsome and decidedly odd features, which luckily have not ALL been exploited , comodified, and privatized.
The Eastern Sierra Hot Springs are goated. Definitely worth a trip out there just for that.
That night around 8pm we drove to a random pick, called Willy's Hot Springs, very tired and hungry. We had no idea what it was and had never been to a hot springs. After confirming we could stay there, we drove for dinner and a beer at Mammoth. When we got back, we were curious and went along the wooden path to see the hot springs.
It was around midnight, there was no moon and 0 light pollution. It was magical. You sit in the cold night in natural hot water, in the middle of pretty barren country. There's all the stars and the milky way. Then all of a sudden it got pretty bright. The moon rose over the horizon. It was the first and only moonrise I've ever seen.
This was the most magical night in nature I've ever experienced. A friend of mine said "oh, Willy's Hot Springs, I've been there too, it was kind of mid." I think we experience the world in different ways.
Average temp: 250F above ambient. Status: Open for soaking. Note: Please don't soak.
Edit: I think it was empire of the sun. They were talking about how difficult it was to film explosions in Japan.
Empire of the Sun was mostly shot in Shanghai and Spain. That was the one where they got fined for burning old tires for the special effect smoke, which dumped a bunch of toxic smoke on Shanghai.
The "Best Time to Visit" thing needs more stringent criteria. It lists "midwinter" for both the listings in NY and in MA, presumably for the biggest temperature differential. Unfortunately, the springs are "well below bath temperature" and it will be literally freezing outside in January.
More than one of these listed was clearly on private property but the listing had no mention.
Quinn hot springs [1] in Montana being one. It is listed as "roadside" with "camping nearby" but in reality it is a paid resort on private property.
[1]https://glaciermt.com/listing/quinns-hot-springs-resort
https://www.reddit.com/r/HotSpringsWest/comments/1jwc8ga/nce...
Why not post it on github? Because federal government data cannot be copyrighted, anyone is free to copy, redistribute, mirror, modify, or publish it anywhere they choose.