The carefully researched random thoughts of Ryan Long

Soaking your sorrows away April 10, 2008

When your troubles start to weigh you down, it’s time to get away and relax. What better place to relax than a hot springs? This was my mindset on Friday, the 11th. My significant other and I decided that it would be a fun, relaxing trip to go out to Chena Hot Springs. The first place I checked was their website, which was put together quite nicely, and didn’t see any accommodations that fit my price range. I called the resorts front desk to find out if they had any cancelations on their cheaper rooms. The girl said that they had vacancies in their number 3 cabin and that I would pay the Alaska rate $119, that was $60 less.

I booked the rooms right away and started packing. It would be 55 miles from where I was, but it would be worth the wait. The drive went by quickly; it took just over an hour to get there and we saw a few moose on the way. After checking in, we took a look at our rooms. The rooms were clean and had cable, but no phone and the wireless internet wasn’t working that day, which they apologized for. We changed into our bathing suits and I met her in the outdoor pool.

The water out there is magic, we stayed in the pool for what seemed like an hour or so and decided to go get dinner. Unfortunately we had actually been in the pool for over 4 hours and quickly rushed into our dinner attire. We grabbed our room keys and practically ran to the restaurant. We got there 15 minutes too late.

We heard some music playing from the lounge and went to sit down. The man playing the guitar and singing was Pete. We decided if we couldn’t have dinner, we could stay for Pete’s music and maybe some soft drinks or appetizers would be enough. Pete came over after his song and gave us a list of what he plays. Ring of Fire seemed appropriate so we picked that.

We got up early the next morning to make sure we didn’t miss breakfast, we were still awfully hungry. After ordering half the menu and drinking a lot of coffee, we packed our stuff and checked out. We were melancholy about leaving, but enjoyed ourselves immensely and would recommend the trip to anyone. It’s my favorite place to escape to when life in town brings me down.