pattar4 minutes ago
In a similar vein I made a site to check local water quality and swimming conditions in the Bay Area. https://bayswimcheck.com/
The Eastern Sierra Hot Springs are goated. Definitely worth a trip out there just for that.
jtwalesonan hour ago
A couple years back I drove from Vegas to Yosemite. Due to a road closure we had to take a 4 hour detour. We had this colourful van from Escape Campervans, and every night looked at freecampsites.net to find a free place to sleep. Nice adventures.
That night around 8pm we drove to a random pick, called Willy's Hot Springs, very tired and hungry. We had no idea what it was and had never been to a hot springs. After confirming we could stay there, we drove for dinner and a beer at Mammoth. When we got back, we were curious and went along the wooden path to see the hot springs.
It was around midnight, there was no moon and 0 light pollution. It was magical. You sit in the cold night in natural hot water, in the middle of pretty barren country. There's all the stars and the milky way. Then all of a sudden it got pretty bright. The moon rose over the horizon. It was the first and only moonrise I've ever seen.
This was the most magical night in nature I've ever experienced. A friend of mine said "oh, Willy's Hot Springs, I've been there too, it was kind of mid." I think we experience the world in different ways.
seplox19 minutes ago
I think it's funny that the volcanic fumaroles are listed. On one hand, yes, they're certainly active geothermal sites. On the other hand, the page is tailored to hot springs.
Average temp: 250F above ambient. Status: Open for soaking. Note: Please don't soak.
solfox3 hours ago
Just spent my birthday weekend down at Travertine Hot Springs in CA. Beautiful, well maintained, and free. https://www.soakingsprings.com/hot-springs/california/traver...
foota2 hours ago
I have a bit of an obsession with trying to find hot springs. Washington state, for all of its mountains, is relatively devoid of hot springs. I feel like there must be some that remain unknown. I'd like to someday use a thermal camera on a drone of some kind to try and find one :) Maybe go along fault lines that have other hot springs?
bix6an hour ago
Hey Armen how accurate is this? That’s a lot of spots to research. I read a bit about your process but you aren’t physically verifying in person so still room for significant error? Pretty cool / helpful though still, thank you!
tony_cannistra2 hours ago
Oy. Checked a couple of these I know personally. You'll find yourself in a world of trespassing if you use this.
jonahan hour ago
Same here. I wouldn't go traipsing through the woods looking for a spring at a set of coordinates without first finding out who the landowner is and contacting them for permission. (If it's not public land.)
tony_cannistra8 minutes ago
In one case I found, the USGS point for the spring is on public land, but the actual spring is on a private inholding. This, of course, led to an error that caused the site to list it as "public."
comrade12343 hours ago
I think it's missing some. There are a couple of hotsprings off the highway between Ventura and Ojai. They're 'wild' and completely natural - you can make your own pools using rocks and sand for dams. I saw Steven Spielberg once when I was there with a few people - he was reminiscing with another guy about the problems they had filming something...
Edit: I think it was empire of the sun. They were talking about how difficult it was to film explosions in Japan.
throwup238an hour ago
Maybe you’re thinking of Letters from Iwo Jima? They shot on location but the island is basically a mass war grave so they couldn’t use much pyrotechnics to avoid disturbing the ground.
Empire of the Sun was mostly shot in Shanghai and Spain. That was the one where they got fined for burning old tires for the special effect smoke, which dumped a bunch of toxic smoke on Shanghai.
comrade123438 minutes ago
Yeah I don't know what movie it was - just that the topic was explosions in Japan.
bsimpson3 hours ago
Sad to see how lacking the East Coast is in hotsprings…
The "Best Time to Visit" thing needs more stringent criteria. It lists "midwinter" for both the listings in NY and in MA, presumably for the biggest temperature differential. Unfortunately, the springs are "well below bath temperature" and it will be literally freezing outside in January.
Ccecil8 hours ago
Be sure to double/triple check before going.
More than one of these listed was clearly on private property but the listing had no mention.
Quinn hot springs [1] in Montana being one. It is listed as "roadside" with "camping nearby" but in reality it is a paid resort on private property.
tony_cannistra2 hours ago
I found several of these as well.
krunckan hour ago
Missing all the hot springs in the Black Hills, South Dakota.
larodi2 hours ago
why only half the map has any points visible? am i getting something odd or just geology?
giarc2 hours ago
Toggle the Geothermal Heat Flow button in top right and you'll see why.
havefunbesafea day ago
Super cool
fier3 hours ago
It is, in fact, the opposite :)
latchkey3 hours ago
Thanks to the DOGE/Trump goverment cutbacks, the previous government listed data was pulled offline. I've got a full copy of the data (much of it is out of date), but I haven't had the time to build a site and put it online. Might get around to it at some point. I'll probably reach out to the guy running the site and see if he wants the data.
https://www.reddit.com/r/HotSpringsWest/comments/1jwc8ga/nce...
solfox3 hours ago
I'm interested! Could be a fun project.
Why not post it on github? Because federal government data cannot be copyrighted, anyone is free to copy, redistribute, mirror, modify, or publish it anywhere they choose.
Obscurity434031 minutes ago
Do'it! :)
metalman15 hours ago
ok, now do the rest of the world, and add layers for cold springs, artesian sources, mineral waters, salt, other, and drop it on OSM best one I ever saw(was in) was somewhere in oregon, inland , vast vocanic pumice plains with pine trees, and an intensly cold spiring comming up in a head pond strong enough to create a big dome of water you can swim into and freeze your ass of, and then get out in a hot desert. our planet has a bunch of awsome and decidedly odd features, which luckily have not ALL been exploited , comodified, and privatized.