Started out the day with a walk through Glenwood Springs and up Boy Scout Trail, an old Ute trail that starts right at the edge where the town meets the canyon. Our hike took us up a fairly steep slope with a narrow trail, through scrub oak and short pines. Great views of the town and Red Mountain beyond (we could also see Red Mountain from our hotel balcony, but not in quite so much of its majesty).

I found some beautiful purple and blue penstemon:

We returned to our hotel to prepare for check-out. Then we took the shuttle to the train station to check our bags because – no surprise here – Amtrak was running late once again. So went stopped for tacos at Slope & Hatch in town and then crossed the Colorado River for an afternoon at the Glenwood Springs Hot Springs.

This really is an impressive place, billed as “the world’s largest hot springs pool.” I’m willing to believe it – the larger, cooler pool (90 degrees) is 405 feet long, and 100 feet wide and the smaller therapy pool (105 degrees) is 100 feet long. The pools’ website advertises “15 minerals that do a body good” – and while I’m pretty sure that the health claims don’t have any validity, the water feels great and leaves your body incredibly salty. The spring delivers three and a half million gallons of water to the pools every day.   And between the 1890 bathhouse and the mountains framing either end of the pool, the views are great.

Pres and I spent much of the afternoon watching our Amtrak train grow later and later (this morning, it was running two hours late; at this point, it’s over five hours late).   We realized that, if Amtrak continues to be late on a regular basis, we would end up being at the Salt Lake City train station at 2am, 3am, 4am… So we called an audible and decided to change the entire trip. We will no longer be going to San Francisco (which involved a long, late-night, potentially early-morning train). We’re sorry to be missing San Fran, which would have included the chance to see Frank, Dina, Karen, and Leon, but waiting around for Amtrak (when the provide so little information) has grown pretty frustrating.  We will, instead, be staying two extra nights in Utah and flying home on Sunday morning.

After many phone calls to rearrange our trip, Pres and I took one more dip in the therapy pool and left the Hot Springs. Now we’re at dinner at CO Ranch House, having a respectable (if not especially interesting) meal as we wait for our train to get to town …. Fortunately, most of the good restaurants here are directly across from the train station, so we can eat and get out of dodge pretty quickly.

Here is the very cute, very well-kept Glenwood Springs train station: