G & B: "A chipmunk ate a hole in my towel!"

Today was the day I have been waiting for this whole trip and the true reason why I wanted to come to Steamboat Springs.... Strawberry Park Hot Springs (http://www.strawberryhotsprings.com/). Greg, Sarah, Jay and I got a shuttle to the springs today and it was everything I had hoped it would be- completely awesome.

Strawberry Park is a series of pools heated by natural hot springs. You can soak in pools ranging from sort of chilly all the way to hot tub hot. It's hard to explain what it looked like but I will try. It basically was a place that has a series of pools made of stones with sand bottoms. The pools were filled with the waters of the hot spring, the mountain creek, or a combination of the two. I think I counted 6 pools, but I'm not sure on that. In the largest pool, the creek and the hot spring waters combined for a somewhat chilly pool but large enough to actually swim around in. This pool had the most kids paddling around. The other pools ranged from a size that would fit only two people, like your own personal natural hot tub, to a pool that 10-20 people were lounging around in. All of the smaller pools had warm to very hot water. I made the mistake of sticking my hand directly into the spring and it burned me just a little. That was not my smartest move ever, but it did confirm to me that these were the real deal. The place was in a valley surrounded by aspens and the hot spring that fed and heated all the pools below started on the hill above and had visible steam coming off of it. To get a better idea of what this looked like see the photos below.

I actually took a break, because those waters were very warm, and decided to eat a lara bar sitting by the side of one of the pools. I got yelled at because apparently there is no food on the deck. Oops. I soon realized why there is no food on the deck. A small chipmunk went inside a beach bag sitting on a chair across from me, looked around, didn't find anything and then moved on the bag next to that. That little thing then moved up on the upper deck area and found another bag to look around in.... no fear! You couldn't even be mad at it because it was so little and cute. It was soon after that that I heard out of no where, "A chipmunk ate a hole in my towel!" I have a feeling these little guys have been doing this for quite a while.

Greg and I have decided to change our travel plan from this point on a bit. We are going to stay in Steamboat until Thursday and look for a little cabin to rent. Then Thursday we move on to Denver. The place where we were going to stay in Colorado Springs has been evacuated because of the fire and we decided to skip Aspen because that was a part of the whole Colorado Springs route..... so we are happy to stay put for awhile. Routt National Forest is right up the road and downtown Steamboat has good restaurants and shopping. We have plenty to keep us busy here. Just cross your fingers for some rain for all of these Colorado-ians....