Juldie

Hi everyone. My husband and I love natural hot springs. Last summer in British Columbia we went to some magnificent ones. I know California has many but I can't seem to find them in my initial research. I am coming across mostly places that offer spa services where there is water from springs.

We are going to be heading to San Francisco for a couple of nights from a week in Lake Tahoe and would love to spend the 1st night somewhere to enjoy hot springs, pools. I am not looking for mostly a spa that we would pay for spa services. What I really would love to discover is inatural springs we can either do a short hike into that is not developed or somewhere with various mineral fed hot pools, regular pools, etc.

Does this exist? We don't want to go more than 1-2 hours off track en route but if I get a suggestion for something I get excited about we likely will go out of our way to do.

happytrailstoyou

Is this what you're looking for: http://www.hotspringsdirectory.com/index.html

HTTY

Juldie

happytrailstoyou, thanks for the link. I have been looking up hot springs and trying to get an idea of what they are like. Some look like small river side pools and others are built up.

I hope to hear if anyone has any recommendation of hot springs they have been to that suits what I am looking for.

Supercilious

There are commercial hot springs within an hour of Tahoe. There's Sierra Hot Springs to the north. There's Grover Hot Springs (a state park)to the south. And there are a couple in the Carson Valley to the east.

For free, natural hot springs on government land, you have to drive south on US 395 from Lake Tahoe 2 to 3 hours. There's a couple near Bridgeport and a bunch near Mammoth Lakes. I won't give you directions here but there is an excellent book you can buy - Touring California and Nevada Hot Springs by Matt Bischoff. You can order it from Amazon.

If you do this drive, then you can drive back to SF via Yosemite National Park. The drive over Tioga Pass is one of the most scenic in the US.