The hot springs of Hot Springs, MT

I think making remote hotsprings a destination is a cool thing to do. We just found a public free hotspring in our local area down by Las Vegas, NM. Put up some photos after you go. We may be making our way up to Missoula this year to tour a facility that makes concrete logs and siding that look like logs and wood.

I've gotta say the town of Hot Springs, MT is charming even if the springs themselves are.. just kinda stinky bath water 🤣 

Along the way we sneaked a peek at the frozen Flathead Lake,  but just long enough to wander around on the shore and buy the swim suits we had forgotten at home.  The hot springs of Hot Springs aren't clothing optional - at least not the one we were visiting.

We stayed at the Symes Hotel which is a 1920's hot spring resort that's managed to stay in character - in a good way - for all that time.   The front lobby's got a fireplace and rustic chairs,  weekends live music which seemed absolutely appropriate (fiddles and pianos..),  the hallways and rooms looked the part.    I'm sure anyone accustomed to modern luxury accommodations would turn their nose up because it was all very rustic - but it was also all very clean. 

I expect that the rooms might not have always had their own tub & toilets, we've stayed in several vintage hotels where community offerings at the end of the hall were what you get.    Our room had a toilet and tub and sink but the doorway was so narrow i we had to turn sideways to fit through it.   Character!

The town is pretty small and fairly remote,  and I don't think it has much industry outside of hot springs. I didn't see any apparent material describing the springs other than their mineral content but they don't seem to be abundant flowing, there's a drainage canal through town but it's not big.  There are a few (pay) pools around town and the whole town can be walked in a few minutes.   Most of the hotels or multi-unit stays (a few random cabins) don't have their own springs. 

The Symes is by far the largest lodging in town, with a cool neon sign and they have a double decker hot pool and a warm-ish swimming pool below it,  I think the water goes from one to the next.    It's a nice facility - like I said rustic - but it was also extremely crowded with families, kids, infants, drunk people, lotta mayhem.  I don't blame any of them for enjoying it how they want but that's the tragedy of the commons if you had envisioned a quiet relaxing soak.    My advice is maybe investigate the other soaks around town if you're staying there - the Symes is great and we'll stay there again but I don't know if I'd go there specifically for the water again. 

For such a small town, and not really on the way to anywhere we were surprised to find a very well stocked natural foods store with a restaurant in the back.   Despite that the town's only real industry appears to be tourism it's not like it's Yosemite Village or anything and this store just felt like a little local shop it didn't really have that pandering tourist gift shop feel, really it's 0% gift shop just food at pretty awesome prices.  

I had a huckleberry jam & mozzarela grilled cheese sandwich.  With a side of blue cheese dressing to dip it in.   Sounds nuts but I'm a believer.

We also encountered some interesting byproducts of a town without much in the way of building code enforcement or fire safety laws..

LOL. Just kinda stinky bath water... Kinda true.

Dig the 4X emblem! Love it.

We have a guy here in Angel Fire that has a very similar looking property (like the one you show with the Teepee-ish structure). It looks like a sort of amusement park next to the airport here. It is called Whatville, NM. https://www.angelfirenm.com/2018/09/what-is-whatville/

That store looks pretty nice. It surprises me sometimes to find places like that not surrounded by much. There is a place down the mountain near us in the town of Cimarron...probably about 20 miles outside of town with nothing around it but herds of Ted Turner's bison called "Cold Beer, New Mexico". Nothing but a bar there called Colfax Tavern. But you step inside and it is really cool. Their motto is "Where Nothing Much Happens but You Better Be Here When It Does." https://coldbeernm.com/

Love exploring those eclectic little towns like that! Thanks for sharing! 

Some good friends and I, used to go up every year for Christmas to a friend in Glenwood Springs, Colorado for a week or so back in the early 80's. They had a small ski resort there, and we would also head up to Aspen and Snowmass. Sometimes make the longer drive out to Beaver Creek and Vail.

It was nice to get home each night in Glenwood Springs, which has the Hot Springs, and Steam sauna caverns. The heat in the caverns felt good, but I recall that the Sulfur smell was less than pleasurable! LOL!

What was nice though was they had a couple of almost Olympic size pools that they filled with the hot spring water. I think they actually had to cool it down a bit, it was so hot. But, everyone would end up there after a day of skiing to sooooothe the sore muscles.

They had these basically metal chair frames in the water, that you could sit in, and they would blow air through the frame, full of holes to make these massaging bubbles, which was very therapeutic! I need to go up and visit him again, been many years!!