come on in, the water's fine

The Eleven is off to Bath County, Virginia come early Saturday morning. (At some point in the next few days the boys are off to Omaha for a four-day weekend.) X was looking for somewhere to go for a little getaway and has latched onto Warm Springs, Virginia. Apparently, there are warm springs there – not hot springs, that would be TOO warm – but nice, tepid waters. We’ll drive about four hours across Virginia, something I didn’t know could be done, and stop just short of needing our passports to enter West Virginia. Our soaks will at the famous Jefferson Pools (so named after George Jefferson of Manhattan), not hot springs, and buildings that look surprisingly like this:


That’s right. It’s a woodshed built over the warm pools – one for guys, one for gals. I’ve checked the Saturday and Sunday weather predicts and it looks like 15 for the low and 31 the high. I'm packing some whale blubber to rub all over myself and some birch branchs in case a horde of Finns show up. Of course, I’ll probably just drip dry when we hit those high temps; maybe my new friends, Mika and Heikki, and I can just stroll back to the Inn in flip-flops and Speedos® while taking in the crisp, cool mountain breezes.

We’re booked at the Inn at Gristmill. The room looks very nice and includes a fireplace, though what one might need a fireplace for is beyond me.


The Inn also has an on-site pub which will hopefully have a number of whiskeys and bourbons available upon my return from our warm soak.

We'll send word as the weekend progresses.