Wowzers! A truly beautiful blessing I wasn't sure I'd ever find out in the middle of the desert! Coming From Southern Oregon, and being in Sacred Ashlandia before coming to California, The Jackson Wellsprings was on and off like home. I always love hot springs out in nature the best, and although the Jackson Wellsprings were large man-made pools that had the hot spring water pouring down into it, I loved it so much. Healing my mind, body and soul, each time I went for a visit there. And of course for many who know me, it's always been that much more special knowing I was on the same grounds of the Goddess Temple as well as the Men's Oak Temple just behind the wellsprings.
So naturally, as soon as I heard of some natural wellsprings out here, I knew I had to go! I headed out with my partner on the great hike to get there. We drove for a while out into the desert, we were aware of 2 ways to get to the wellsprings. If you go through one hiking path, it was about 6 miles in until you reach the springs, and there is also a wonderful man who owns land that is only about 2.5 miles away from the springs, and he so graciously offers people to leave $5 or $10 fee to be able to park safely on his land and hike from there. We chose to go through this man's land, pay the small fee to shorten the hike so that we could make it there and back all in a day's trip. It was a beautiful hike, and a wonderful fitness challenge for me, as bot the way all the way out there and back had some pretty steep uphills and downhills, certainly a good challenge. I caught some ahhmazing photos of the sunset on the way back that you'll be able to see down below. I didn't snap any photos of the springs themselves when we were there, as there were a few other people there as well when we got there. There were about 3 good sized pools, and just right on the other sides of the rocks we sat within in the great heat of the water (was definitely a pretty good hot temperature) was the ice cold water flowing from the river around us. Just one toe dip on the other side of the rock wall from where we were sitting in heat was icy water.
It's really a great feeling meeting people in other places we travel to, especially when it's something like this ~ completely out in nature, a nice long hike to get there. It just feels different colliding your souls with others in places like these versus much easier and now a days much more common places like hotels, restaurants, bars, local parks, etc. It feels like a mixture of good things; meeting souls of like minds, meeting very unique individuals and having conversations of where they've been and what they do and what they've seen, exposing yourself to new ideas and experiences you maybe hadn't thought of or been aware of before. Honestly, countless possibilities come from trusting the traveling path, and being completely open to all that may happen along the way.
So to anyone who finds themselves around the Mojave Desert and wishes to visit this magickal little place in person, it's called the "Deep Creek Hot Springs" that is located in the northern Mojave Desert section of the San Bernardino National Forest near Hesperia. The longer approximately 6 mile hike into the wellsprings is called the "Pacific Crest Trail" in Apple Valley California, or you can find the shorter hiking trail that we used through "The Bowen Ranch." There are great spots to camp out if you'd like to carry your tent out with you overnight that we saw when we were there. I was able to pull some pretty great photos of the actual hot spring location itself from the web below, along with all the awesome photos I was able to get along the way as well.
ENJOY!
**also don't forget to check out the video posted from the hike back under "videos" tab as well as my youtube page**
