Tuesday June 27th, 2023
We don’t like to drive more than 4-5 hours on travel days, so we needed a stop between our Salt Lake City/Heber City stop and our two week stay near Yellowstone.
Lava Hot Springs struck out to me since the only thing our beautiful rig is missing is a bathtub!
We stayed at the Lava Hot Springs East KOA. It’s a nice park, with newer amenities like playground equipment and laundry and it sits right on the Portneuf river, but the price is too high for gravel sites and they charge an extra fee for dogs. I have never seen a dog fee at a KOA and we stay at them all the time. For the extra fee, I’d expect a Taj Mahal dog park, but Reba was not impressed with the tiny size, no room to throw the ball and no place for daddy to sit.
We met some really cool people at the park. Our next door neighbors were both ex military and they have some very cool life stories. I hope I see a book from them in the future. If so, I’ll recommend it to you!
The little town of Lava Hot Springs is cute. It is definitely set up for tourists to the springs and river tubing. There are tubes for rent every 100 feet or so and the hot springs and swimming center are walkable from everywhere.
Tim and I visited the famous hot springs soaking pools. It is a beautiful facility with multiple pools ranging from 102 to 112 degrees. The grounds are landscaped with gorgeous flowers, plants and statues to add to the relaxing ambiance. The springs are unique as they are all natural with no chemicals, no sulfur and no odor.
Soaking in the hot pools is incredibly relaxing, but it does push your heart rate way up, so be careful when getting out. We saw a few get lightheaded.
We took a 20ish mile drive over to Soda Springs and found the Soda Springs Geyser, which was a fun surprise. It was “discovered” when the town leaders were searching for more hot springs, but accidentally hit an underground carbon dioxide gas chamber that shot fizzy water over 70 feet in the air.
The story goes that shortly afterwards they got a telegram from the Secretary of the Interior to ask them to turn the geysers off because it was throwing off the schedule of “Old Faithful.” The Geyser is now mechanically managed and goes off every hour on the hour for 5-10 minutes. Be sure to watch the video below.
