Locker #292

This afternoon (Sunday) we loaded up the van and headed to Miette Hot Springs. We spent half a day at a kindasorta similar area in Thermopolis, Wyoming a few years ago so the kids were pretty jazzed about it. I warned them that it wasn’t going to be remotely the same (the place in Thermopolis is basically a hot springs waterpark and the kids LOVED it) but everybody was still fired up about going. So go, we did. Miette Hot Springs is about 45 minutes from Jasper. It consists of a couple of smallish city park-sized hot springs pools (25 meters x 15 meters, tops) and a couple of tiny cold-water plunge pools. The drive out to it is terrific and I guess it’s nice enough, but everybody was pretty underwhelmed. Instead of being the hot water equivalent of Schlitterbahn, it basically gives one the opportunity to sit in a glorified hot tub next to a collection of old, hairy, overweight Europeans wearing Speedos. What is up with that? Reagan said that they should be ticketed for visual pollution. I can’t say that I disagree.

Hairy Europeans and small swimsuits aside, it seems that the main drawback of Miette Hot Springs is that in order to get TO the pools, one has to run the locker room gauntlet. And to hear Reagan and Hunter tell it, this is no small feat. On the Men’s side, I put all of our junk in Locker # 292, got Hollis ready. and took him on out to the pools. About five minutes later, Reagan and Hunter emerged and fast-walked straight over to me, looking as though they had seen ghosts.

“Did you SEE those guys in there??”

What?

“What IS it with those people??!!”

What are you talking about?

“They were standing around TOTALLY NAKED, showering and walking around and stuff!!”

Well, yeah ... it’s a men’s locker room.

“Seriously??  Who DOES that?? It’s totally disgusting.”

Mind you, Hunter arranges towels in front of the smallish oval window looking out to the front yard when he has to take a shower in the guest room bathroom ... so ....

About an hour and far too many Speedo eyefulls later (with, according to the boys, precious little in the way of tolerable female bikini goodness to balance the equation), we got everyone together and started getting ready to leave. Before entering the locker room, Hollis and Hunter -- and I SWEAR I am not making this up -- began devising ways to wrap their towels around their heads in order to cover their eyes. When they realized that this approach couldn’t really work because it might actually cause them to bump into a naked hairy European, they decided to just follow me through the showering area and avert their eyes like a couple of questing Knights of the Round Table. This method seemed to work pretty well until we got to a certain row where a 40-ish hairy European had hiked his leg up on the bench ... stark naked ... the better to dry his equipment. After passing this guy up, I realized that he was, in fact, doing his business directly in front of Locker #292. 

Awesome. 

Being the good father that I am, I left the boys in row N + 1 and said that I would go back to Locker #292 to secure our belongings so that the boys wouldn’t be scarred for life. Hunter said that he thought that was a “terrific idea”. What happened after that? Well, when Hollis emerged from the privacy stall the first thing he saw was a 50-ish, graying, obese, stark naked (do they come any other way?) European, bending over to pick up his shoes. Or doing calisthenics. Or maybe looking around for loose change. Whatever it was, Hollis was directly in his line of fire, no more than 10 feet away. I wouldn’t have been surprised in the least if he (Hollis) had turned into a pillar of salt ...

On our way back to the van, I asked Hunter and Hollis if maybe they’d like to go have some split buns for dinner. Reagan chimed in that perhaps we should all go have hot dogs. Surprisingly, nobody seemed interested in that. As the van doors shut, I asked Hunter how he felt. “Ummm ... kinda nauseated”, was his response. And I am pretty sure that neither he nor Hollis uttered more than 10 words during the entire 45-minute return trip to Jasper. Seriously.

Perhaps we have found the secret to vacation travel harmony ...

As for the other events of the day, as promised (threatened), I got Hadley and Hunter up at 5:45 this morning in hopes of getting in a decent half-day (8-10 mile) hike. I was gonna write about that too but at this point I think I’ve used up all of my good material. Suffice to say that the animal pictured at the top of the page is a pika (it is Hadley’s favorite), we had a decent hike, and if I’m really gonna do anything “interesting”, it’s gonna have to be solo. But it’s all good.  :)

Tomorrow (Monday) we head out for five nights in Banff. We’ve planned a stop at the Columbia Icefields en route. Weather looks crappy so we’ll likely be walking on a glacier in the rain ... but I’m hoping that won’t make it any less cool. Obviously I’ll let you know how it goes.

As always, thanks for stopping by.

Mike