Hot Springs, MT (plus a video!)

 

After leaving the Up Up Lookout fire tower, we drove to Hot Springs, MT. The name of the town drew us in, and we thoroughly enjoyed the drive there. As I mentioned before, Montana is one of our favorite states because of all the natural beauty, and we saw tons of wilderness along this drive. The people were pleasant too - we bumped into an older traveling couple at a visitor center, and ended up walking away with a gift of homemade salted & roasted sunflower seeds!

Onto the hot springs - we've soaked in natural springs in Costa Rica and were excited to repeat the experience... and we quickly learned that not all hot springs are created equal. We expected a set of interconnected pools, surrounded by beautiful greenery, and maybe with an adjacent bar (based on our Costa Rican experience). What we got this time was a typical cement pool - not quite a tropical paradise! Even though the ambiance left a bit to be desired, we did had a good time in the pool and hot tub and even met a Russian family who often go there to vacation from 3 hrs away.

It was really cool, though, to stay at Symes Hotel, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. The hotel has a cult following of locals and visitors from afar who have been coming for decades to soak in the healing mineral waters. The hotel is one of the last remaining resort hotels in the area (read more about the history here) and has a definitive hippie vibe - just see our pictures below.

On our drive over we popped into another hot springs hotel just to get some lunch (Yelp led us there for good food), and we were pleasantly surprised to find a whole flock of humming birds feeding outside. Apparently they always come out here in the summer and the staff even put up a bunch of sugar-water bird feeders for them (see the video at the bottom of the post).

-Taras

See more Montana posts here.

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