MLK Day at Verde Hot Springs

Fossil Creek on MLK Day (Photo taken by Sarah)

I decided to take a floating holiday on Monday since my work doesn't believe in celebrating the King. Really, it was just that my friends had off and were planning a little adventure and I really really wanted to join.

We headed up to the Verde Valley area and bumped over the dirt road for an hour to get to the Verde River. Our destination was a natural hot springs about 1.5 miles upriver known as the Verde Hot Springs. I have been before this time, but there was a big difference this time from then: freezing cold winter river versus nice low warm summer river.

See the hot springs is on the other side of the river, and now the river is freezing and swollen from snow runoff further north making crossing it quite the adventure. We looked for a good crossing place and eliminated a couple due to too high of a current. We finally went further past the hot springs before finding a doable spot. It ended up being a bad spot because we had to cross the water twice and it was higher and faster than we thought. Did I mention the water was freeeeeeeeeeezing? It was.

This part was the wide slow part. We later had to join hands to cross a rapid area but
no pics could be taken due to the need to not die.

Once across we got across the river, did I mention it was cold, we rushed our poor frozen legs down to the hot springs and jumped in. There were some hippies there who had the same idea as us. The outside pool seen below is 100 degree and the pool inside the little house (2nd photo below) is 104. It was awesome.

We then had one more freezing trip across the river but we found a shorter, less deep and less rapid spot to cross. We stopped off at the always turquoise water Fossil Creek on the way back to the highway for a little hike. Followed that up by some Mexican from the little joint in Payson. Overall a great day. Now back to reality. I started classes last night since I still have to take a couple of prerequisites. Laters.