vichy springs
so this year i appointed Amo to be in charge of our anniversary plans, and she treated me to a lovely weekend away from the city up at Vichy Springs Mineral Springs Resort and Country Inn. it’s about 2 hours north of SF, up in Mendocino.
the baths are 150 yrs old and still in their original condition. basically, you lift this giant steel plug and let the spring water fill it up (it’s not exactly ‘hot’…more luke-warm). and then lay down in it. like laying in a coffin. the water is somehow naturally carbonated, so millions of tiny bubbles form all over your body. the idea is that it increases your blood flow and has ‘positive health effects.’ we definitely felt refreshed…as for anything beyond that, who knows.
it was a fun night out of our usual element. we had a yummy dinner in town at an all-organic steakhouse. then i forced us to stop in a starbucks and brainstorm about our wedding, and finally we had a fun ‘connected’ conversation late into the night.
the next morning, we decided to take a little hike before heading home. the fields were amazingly beautiful. unfortunately, it turned into the hike from hell. we headed out to find the waterfalls, and the first path we took led us through the woods and into the stream and eventually vanished. so we turned around and tried another path that went straight up. surely, this was the right way. thing is, it kept going up. we’d get around a corner that looked like the top, and it kept going up further. no problem - “into the wild!” (we just watched the movie). so after climbing for literally about 45 mins, i was shirtless, drenched in sweat and crawling up the hill. Amo was about 5 mins behind me - i had ditched her in an effort to see if it really was the right way. finally, we just said fuck it and turned around. embarrassingly, this other fit couple went up before us, and caught up with us on the way down.
