Idaho Hot Springs, the Real Deal

 Here's JUST the posts of the month of June. Today is Thursday, June 22, 2:46pm and I'm gunna take a break. I put down hat first paragraph a day or so ago after having a talk with you. then today I spent all day off and on putting down what i have now, which is quite a bit. It looks like paragraphs 2-6. I think I  need to get outside for a  short bit. I'll put the clean up and wrap up on it later and I'll have to go into it once more to finish off the subject, and even then I'll be just be glancing over and past much of it but from an editorial standpoint I'll be hitting the only parts you'd want to  read or even close to it. The rest would be pretty dry, which is sayin alot cuz I think some of itso far is dry. But I do my best to keep it flowing with some interesting tid bits here and there. So until the conclusion........... Oh my gosh it's tonight but 10:47pm and this ended up being 4933 words, and i haven't done the little blurb at the bottom, it'll be super brief.

Hey! Have you watched Big Mouth yet? Its on Netflix. You gotta watch it. It's hilarious. Here is the link again.

I have it in my mind, and on this point, I know  that I'm right on the money, that you don't hear enough about you. I think in general nobody does but I think it's important. One of the things that I've learned, and that I practice on myself, is positive reinforcement. Simple concept that is easy to forget about, and it works. So i'm going to step over the line a little bit, and get out of my comfort zone. But I think it's about time. When I look at you, i don't think I see the same person that you do when you look in the mirror, and well, while that's fairly common, because, we are our own worst critics, you need to know who I see. You're beautiful. Inside and out. I yearn to see more of that inner beauty. The artist. The free spirit, the one with punk backing it. The girl who's not afraid to get dirty, who carves herself out of stone with a sharp blade. And who's not afraid. I'll wait, it'll show itself in due time. But in order to become that girl again, you've got to hear how beautiful you are on the outside too. Because you are just that: beautiful. I've never exactly said that to you prior to this point, and it's a shame i don't quite have the inner strength to hold your hand in mine and look into your eyes and explain the beauty that I see. Especially when you smile, doubly so when that goofy spark shines through. But that day will come when I have that courage. For now, just know that I'm shy and I hide behind this pen. But believe me when I say that you're a sparking beauty in this age of overblended microstyles. Everything I see in this crazy world around, in my strife, is brown. Too many details and my eyes can't make them out. They all blur together in one big average. But you stand out. And you have since we first met. I've spoke about that on a number of  occasions. It's more than just the moxie of ability. You're really pretty and you should be proud of that. You've got a great body, a gorgeous face and smile. You're tall and you're filled not too much and not too little, a great balance on that. All in all, you're damned cute and anyone who gets to walk beside you, holding your hand and opening your doors, should consider himself fortunate. Nurture that inner you. Let that badass grow. I simply have come to the point where i just had to let you know that I consider you to be very beautiful, both in spirit and your outward facing, j'en sais pas, soul or skin or self. It's a pleasure to have you as a friend, and knowing that you're there when i need you, especially for those times when i can't see that need myself. I'm too often ignorant of my own self and I am always needing that other set of eyes. Thank you for making my world bright again and bringing a smile back onto my face.

With that I'll switch topics and go back to finishing up my Hot Spring Saga, picking it back up with Idaho. I left off with  Campground hot springs is off the Boise river and its a ranger cabin you can rent with three hot springs. One right there next to the camping spots and ranger cabin (we chose the cheaper camp spots instead of the cabin) and then Moondipper and Pineburl are down about 2 miles upstream.  I can't quite recall which one is which but both Moondipper and Pineburl were among the most heavenly soaks you can imagine. Scalding hot water comes up through the sandy stream bottom, with just an inch or three of ice cold mountain water passing over the top. I think its Moondipper in the photo, and you can hardly tell its a hot soak. and had the ice cold water not been moving underneath, you wouldn't be able to stand it because it was that hot. It was heaven. it warmed, well damned near heated to the point of burning while the ice cold water weaves its way underneath keeping you from getting too hot and burning. Oh la la. Perfect for an aching back. I made an index page and links to all of the photos I had of that hotspring duopoly because the one was just too  crappy. (You can find that index where each photo links to a  bigger one here)

At the other end of the Boise River, near Challis, (correction, I looked it up, it was Stanley) was Resort Hot Spring. I forget what the official name was (I looked that up too, it was Mountain Village Resort) but we'll call it that. It was just the right temperature, plenty deep and the resort had put a little hut over it. It wasn't too far from the resort, and just a few feet from the river. A perfect combination especially when its cold out and there's snow on the mountains that the view affords you. its free if you stay at the resort, which we did. I can't recall why we got a room at that place and no other, but we did. One of the very few times we payed to sleep somewhere. See, part of the reason for that was that was we were so accustomed to getting room and board for free that we were spoiled. All I had to do was offer them a free write up in one of the magazines (all of them if i had to push) and they'd give out the room for free. We saw and experienced a lot of the Northwest that way. It was a great deal. Plus the gas to and from such places was a tax write off. 

Dave, my business partner was a dick though. He'd always take our gas money out as extra pay. So if we spent $70 in gas to get to a race or go to a resort to do a review, on the weekend mind you, on my free time, time that he spent fucking off doing nothing, he'd take that amount as a reimbursement to himself. (No  I didn't get the reciprocation because he never did anything like that) At that time, i was young and thought, meh, it didn't matter. But I look back on it now, and fuck he was a dick for doing that. There was so little editorial content that he contributed to that it was lame. At the time, I didn't care. Its hindsight thats 20/20. That whole time, he payed me peanuts. See we had two corporations. One that we formed together, and the other that we formed together. Lol. Seriously. He kept 100% of one and we split the other one 51/49 (I was the 49). I was the one that ratted on his business partner and told him about all of the embezzlement. I was the one that gathered all  the evidence for him to be able to walk away with $40,000 (half of what Tom had embezzled from him). That was all me. I was the one that designed the paper for him that we started together to basically — see to win in court would cost alot of money, so instead we hatched a plan to start a competing paper, and take the biz away from his business partner (Tom) that way. For being that guy,  I got zero. For the first year while he was making money I was doing all the graphics and making $300-$500 a month because I didn't know how to value and price myself. And he would not give me the bigger ads, he'd do those himself.  So I was fucked. I was the one that gave him the scoop and he didn't cut me in. It was my graphics that got the eye of the Washington State Snowmobile Association (WSSA) and with them hiring us to do their paper, we launched another company that was split evenly, and by that i meant 51/49 whereby I was Mr 49. And he still payed me as an independent contractor for all the work I did for his other paper that we had started together. We didn't take salaries either. I mean we called it that but to the IRS it was a tax-free schedule K shareholder distribution. And when there was too much money in the account, we'd get $5000 or $10000 or whatever (usually iirc it was when there was 10k or 20k in excess we'd split it evenly and by that i  mean, yea, you guessed it, 51/49) And guess what? It was my graphics that got us paper #3, #4, and #5. And I worked on average 2 to every 1 of his hours, and everyone at the company really. I'd show up about dawn and leave about dusk. And I'd work weekends at races or lodging reviews, or whatever. That was all me. (and he fucked me in so many more ways, it's embarrassing) So, I'd find a lodge near a killer hot spring and go write a review and see the hotspring. That was how we got to know the Cascade Idaho area. That's where we were going to build our dream home. As you can imagine we did a lot of driving. For a while, a couple years almost, we would go to Boise or Cascade almost every other weekend. And all those miles all we did was talk. We talked about everything. (then a few years later we got a job driving for a branch of the Hells Angels, muling Canadian buds from Bellingham to Dallas, St. Louis or MIlwaukee. 50-70 lbs at a time, $200 a pound for us. But that's another story. I'm just illustrating how much we spent in the car to drive {see what I did there?} this point home) And one of our favorite topics to talk about to pass the time was our dream home. We built it, enhanced it and talked about it. One of the $4000 'Success' seminars that Dave made us go to was this dude Marshall Silver. And one of his things was that in order to accomplish something you have to know is what it looks like. That if you leave it up to the imagination or don't pay attention to visualize then the chances of getting what you want are slim to none. But if you visualize it and knew every detail on what success was going to look like for you, then you'd have a much better chance. So we took that Idea  and brought it to our talks about what our dream home would look like. We designed everything from  the fireplace and all the shelves everything and we did so with different types of native Northwest Lumber, northwest minerals and the such. It was a fun topic. But, anyway that was going to be in Cascade and a lot of the reason why we fell in love with Cascade was because of the hot springs. Mainly just two of them. Mile 16 Hot Spring and Trail Creek Hot Spring. I liked'm so much i even have more photos of them, (Other 16 MIle Here) and (Other Trail Creek Here). 

Trail Creek Hot Spring (5025, 5029) was only ahead of Mile 16 (5031) because it was ON THE WAY to Mile 16 (5002) Hot Spring. And it was considerably closer too. Trail Creek ws about 19 miles from the town of Cascade, on the way to Warm Lake, while to get to mile 16, you gotta get to Warm Lake (just a few miles more) then go left (north) and finish off the pavement and then it was 16 miles on single lane (2 way, single lane mind you) gravel curvy beside a river with drop off right the tires on one side and steep like straight up no slope rock wall on the other side. Needless to say, you can only get to this one in the summer months or via snowmobile in the winter and despite them both being 60 feet from the road and 16 mile being easily 2/3 longer to get to,16 mile was the busiest. We could manage to get there and not see people though, the trick was weekdays and early. Back then there was only the one book to guide you and word of mouth. These days, google came up with tons of hits right off the  bat. Back then my page got a lot of hits because it was just about hot springs. No directions, no text, we didn't want to spoil the fun of hunting them down lol just really wanted to brag about having been there. If Apple wouldn't have taken off their built in webserver by default and their accompanying mac.com website auto hosting as easy as Pandora thing they had going on (homepage.mac.com) I'd still have it up. It was the grandaddy to all these sites you see now. Back then i went to the usenet, and compuserve for hard to get info on tracking down some of these. It wasn't easy. And even though I had lots of time to do this I really didn't. Especially once we found ones we liked it became hard and harder to hunt out new ones. You'll see lists all over the net with tons more hot springs and may wonder why didn't we. Well, they all cost and if it was $1 we didn't consider it and that left a lot on the table. I was stubborn like that. Well me and the ol' lady were. She may have been lying (I say that because she lied about some little white lie things and kept those secrets all the way through the divorce and it was stupid shit but it just cemented the divorce, no i mean really. Look i may choose better adjectives for my stories and I may not remember all of the details and fill in what i surmise the info should be but i don't outright lie about anything and i never have even about small things like that. Look she said rock music was her favorite and she hated football. just like me. Well that was a lie and she could have been honest. It wouldn't have changed anything except she wouldn't have been a liar liar pants on fire. I consider that shit inexcusable. i mean just when it comes down to long term closeness, trust and shit. I know Tom did the same thing to his ex (he subtracted a year or two off his age) but I'm not dating him so i let it slide and just take things with a grain of salt with him but thats salt i can't take with a life partner. Fuck the fibbers. Or only fuck'm until you find out theyre fibbing lol)

So Trail Creek, just 19 miles from Cascade and 60 feet from the road. But Cascade was almost 11 hours from Tacoma. Yet we still made the drive a bunch, maybe its more like 9, i forget, it was a haul. And it's right up close to the Idaho State Park that's a garnet mine. One of the two places on the planet where they've found Star Garnets ("The star garnet was designated the official state stone or gem of Idaho in 1967. More precious than either star rubies or star sapphires, the Idaho garnet is usually dark purple or plum in color, with four rays in the star (occasionally the star has six rays, as in a sapphire)." Taken from State Symbols Usa dot com and it has a picture. That's one of those places that I will get back to here in the next year or two, without a doubt. I found a like one ounce one there one year, It made a  really nice cabochon that I gave to someone who I haven't spoken to since, and we all know what that means. She's a bitch lol no not really but to save my embarrassment let's drop it. Anyway Jenn and i never made it there. We pillaged the garnet gravel company and found a 50lb sack of garnet sand on the road that we happily grabbed, and pillaged the staurolite from down the road but we never did the garnets. There's actually off color staurolite just  between you and Raymond, wa. Small crystals but right on the road, (It's actually in the Doty Hills, so its closer to Raymond than you and its Augite, not staurolite, but i guess i must have had it wrong in my head because they're mineralogically similar, although i didn't verify that guess in case i was wrong lol) literally zero feet from the road, not too far from Mimas Mounds, which you owe it to yourself to go see. They're kinda nothing but they also only occur on one place on the planet.

Dangit, the actual Trail Creek Hot Springs as you can maybe see from the photos, are river rocks concreted together to make a pool that captures the hot water, with two vents, one upstream to let in the cold water and one downstream to let the hot water out. Adjust as you see fit. It's pretty rad. I'm trying to remember now, what made 16 mile better, it must have been that we found it first, and it was the one that you could keep for the longest, because they're set up exactly the same. I think the only exception is that Trail creek is on the opposite side of the creek and you gotta jump rocks or walk a bridge or something while 16 mile is straight down the hill. The general rule of thumb is that you can use them as long as you want but if someone starts hovering around the top, looking anxious you either gotta talk to them or get out cuz it's their turn, or both. We met some pretty cool people that way. Perhaps the most famous of which was at Krigbaum. Krigbaum was our favorite for a long time, until the fucking dirty hippies, the fucking revered holiest of the holy, the Rainbow family, got it shut down because the trashed it and left it trashed. That's where my distaste of hippies went to a nuclear level. I already didn't like them because of how non-accepting they are and hypocritical. Ugh. Let me lay it out. First off, if you don't agree with them, they judge you like a motherfucker. Many times before they even know what the fuck. I mean down south, they may think you're a druggie, but they'll still invite you in for dinner. They may try to convert you to baptist or something but they'll be nice. HIppies? If they don't like you or something they ASSUME you stand for— i've been spat on, had drinks dumped on my head, accosted, attacked, all by hippies without ever saying a word. Fucking chickenshit fucking assholes. I'll explain in a second. My buddy has two vehicles which get under ten miles to the gallon and he laid it out this way. He said, if he drives his lifted bad ass pickup getting about 8mpg into seattle, he'll get people yelling at him, wanting to slash his tires and throwing eggs on his car for driving a gas guzzler that's killing the planet you fucking loser, what have you got against trees? His words, not mine. Then he's got a bad ass cherry 67 or 64 Mustang, one of the cool years in the 60s (well thy were all cool in the 60s but i digress). A sweet ride. A convertible of course. It gets a little less mpg but only 1 less, he said, about 7mpg. He would drive that bad boy into Seattle and the same basic people that were egging his car and telling him he's a planet murdering tree butchering asshole, were asking him to get a ride in it and can they take  a picture and all this shit. Totally fucking hypocritical bullshit. Now, while they weren't obviously the exact same people, i believe him that he couldn't tell they were all dreddy headed hippies to him. And i believe his anecdotal story was true. Now me, first of all, wherever the Rainbow family, the most famous of all the hippie groups, would have their annual gathering, it would be declared a national disaster area and probably still is happening the same way, but they leave the festival location, at least the ones i heard about in montana oregon and idaho, they were so bad when they left that the areas got declared national disaster areas, and get the same funding and resource allotment to clean it up as a tornado or fucking katrina. And meanwhile they all claim some holier than thou bullshit that's just a total front about how we care for the planet we're trying to save gaia, while all you assholes in your smog dragons are burning it down by using all the fossil fuels and pollution all around when in fact they are doing the same if not worse because let's face it a 67 microbus isn't the most fuel efficient car on the lot and the way that they pollute is well documented and like i said they got their area turned into a national disaster area for leaving it in such a wreck after their annual festival gathering and they put so much soap and shit into the hotsprings we loved, Krigbaum that they got it shut down forever. But what specifically did they to me? Besides all that. See, there was this group in Idaho. See the so-called green environmentalists were trying to get a well known and heavily used recreation area  shut down. They wanted an area, a mountain, i don't recall which one, to be turned into single use only. Which was hiking. No equestrian, no mountain bikes, no snowmobiles in the winter (which by the way ever even touch the mountain they are feet above it on snow), no nothing but hiking and currently it was multi use and everybody shared the use of it but the hippies wanted that mountain shut down. And that made the equestrian people mad first, and they have money, so they started the ball rolling and then the snowmobilers got in and they created shirts to sell to fund the lawyers necessary to fight the hippies bid to turn this well loved and used and shared mountain into hiking only. The shirt, and i bought a half dozen not just because they were my clients but because I thought the shirt was ingenious, said one thing on the  back, "TREE HUGGERS SUCK" and on the front of the shirt it had an anthropomorphic beaver styled like  a logger and it said in a much smaller font, circling the beaver, "Citizens Against Suckheads." And I wore the crap outta my shirt, or two, but I bought like 6 and gave them away, or traded an ad for them, something like that. Dave may have gotten three and I got three, something anyway and i wore holes in at least one, but the most craziest time I ever had with that shirt was when i wore it to Bumbershoot. And we bought the fancy passes that year along with a hotel in downtown, cuz Jenn loved that festival and i wanted to take her out to a nice dinner and have a good weekend. Our passes allowed us to cut lines and all that, it was fun. Fucking tickets though, like three hundred bucks, prolly each, for three days though, add in the dinner, weed, 2 nights at a downtown hotel and that's a lot of dough to be spat on and yelled at all weekend ,i even got a soda pop dumped on my head from somebody in a walkway over the pedestrian path. They would flip out. I couldn't get anyone to take a second and hear my side of the story, what the shirts represent, because let's face it they were wanting to exclude horses too, and they're more natural than we are. And if you read the way it was actually worded, and the BLue Ribbon Coalition pointed this out to me, if you read it they were banning all mechanical items, so pocket knives and zippers too would technically not be allowed. Fuckng ludacris. BUt anyway I mean if anyone would have listened to me or even allowed me to say my side of the story they'd understand that it was a bona fide good idea to be on the side of the citizens against suckheads. But instead of engaging me with compelling arguments of why I shouldn't wear that shirt without knowing what it was about they chose to act like little children and spit on me for christ's sake, and dump pop on me and well the yelling I expected but I thought at least one person would listen to my side of the story and either agree with me or explain why only human feet should be allowed, no farm animals no grazing nothing, no horses, fucking stupid, because If i would have heard one good compelling reason even if i didn't agree, i was wanting and willing to give taht shirt to them so they could pee on it or burn it or whatever. But no, they chose to act like children by default. So that's why I agree with Eric Cartman on the whole hippie deal.

But before Krigbuam got shut down it was fucking awesome. Right next to the highway, kinda off a little trail that's easily missed, It was rocks that were cemented (again) but on the side of a hill with a bucket that you'd use to go twenty feet to the creek and get cold water if you needed it but usually didn't because it wasn't super hot but it wasn't lukewarm either, more like 101 something like that, and it seems many of the good hot springs were 103 to 112, which IIRC, most hot tubs stop at 104 or 106. It was chest deep too, loved that, with flat rocks to set drinks or candles on and it held 4 people easily 6 comfortably and more if you don't mind close quarters, We'd shared quite a few evenings with all sorts of people, a killer very cute couple came in one night and went skinny dipping with us that was cool (they were both about 20 with sweet bods and cute features and they were all over each other. it was fun to be watching. the voyeur in me was loving it) but the best time and the reason why i went on this train-wreck of a stroll down memory lane in the first place, were these two guys that showed up. Now remember this is Idaho, the red state republican territory where you could still wear sidearms into the bars for christ sake. But they came and you could tell, right away, there was  a top and a bottom and the bottom was super fucking shy and nervous. But as the night progressed they started to get more comfortable and eventually the party went back to their motorhome. We were drinking and smoking pot and getting loaded on i forget what probably my whiskey, and slowly but surely the bottom was getting less shy. We learned all about them being together for three years and this and that and the culmination and grand finale of it all was them singing a duet, i think it was by sonny and cher or some such 60s or 70s male-female icons and they sang it perfectly, you could tell they practiced it alot and it was a love song— just for the life of me i can't recall what exact song it was—i'm sure jenn knows but she quit accepting my calls years ago. Fun times. But that hot spring, while close to Cascade, or McCall actually which isn't far, is now closed because the hippies bathed in it and left it trashed.

In the next and final section of the hot spring saga i'll wrap it up and include the other hot springs I liked and that'll basically be all the ones I remember. But that won't take long, because I am thinking now and i really can't  recall that many others if at all any really. But I do recall two or three at least, judging from the photos when i look at them.

Briefly:

AI Stuffs. I  put three in. What can i say. I really liked #2 & 3, hey #1 is pretty cool too. No one shared my love, they all got super low scores.

Youtubes. Dead Weather & Acid Bath. I've already spoke about The Dead Weather a bunch, I won't rehash that. But Acid Bath, wahoo, killer band, and they're from Houma, Louisiana, where the Murrays are from, well actually Orange , TX, but they were all in Houma when I was born. In the bayou. Thats close to where my early childhood was, which was Thibodeaux. Anyway, Acid Bath features Dax Riggs who is the genius in Deadboy and Elephantman. Acid Bath is way more punk. Good music.  Scream of the Butterfly is almost my favorite song by them, I even have part of it as a ringtone.

myTunes. I'm basically done with version 1.0. All the links should go the named album or whatnot. I'm sure I'll add more. As soon as I'm done with all the songs, I'll collapse it all in a collapsible thing and make all the youtubes into a collage.

Music, I love. I wanted to share my Mommy and Psycho 78 and SoreLoser music with you again by leaving this up for the third time. The latter two i created their artwork and stuff and the former I just really liked. Then somewhere amidst that debacle, i not only was able to dig up my CD Baby account to get at all the places where I was able to get the SoreLoser CD in to (that info is in the text on the page I made for their album, No Justice) but I was also able to finally dig up the Archive.org link to J&M Publishing's website (My company – we almost had a million dollar year once, just shy of it). That was important to me because it allowed me to re-animate some old sites that I had been reminiscing about: Murray's Rockpile, Hotpools, xxxpinions, and Jato Cafe.  I decided to throw in some more songs to the list down below, the top 100, lol, and I wanted to further test my media player so I dropped it in this folder of Erin Corday, a wonderful singer, and it worked!