Mystic hot springs and school buses

Let’s Google it…
I grabbed my iPhone while lying down in one of the two vast beds at the enormous Motel room in Wendover, Utah.

After spending 5 days at the Bonneville Salt Flats, for the “BUB Motorcycle Speed Trials”, we were trying to make a travel plan for the few remaining days in Utah.

A large window in our room opened to a rocky wall at the edge of the town. Wendover is a strange place with forgotten abandoned military airstrips where the “Enola Gay” secretly practiced before dropping the atomic bomb in Hiroshima during WW II.

Driving back from the Salt Flats along the Main Street, we see just a few motels until a clearly drawn line on the street announces the state of Nevada with five huge casinos. Wendover is cut in two by the state border between Utah and Nevada, between the Mormon state and the Casino state.

We were lucky to find the “Salt Flats Café” and “Los Compadres” a couple of friendly family ran Mexican restaurants where beans, fajitas and tortillas are a delicious and cheap fare and so we almost escaped the bunker feeling of the casino’s pretentious kitsch restaurants.

And so, as I pressed the button Enter for “Utah hot springs”, five locations showed up and Mystic Hot springs was one of them. A positive review made us decide for it.

Trim…trim…trimmm “well… we have no bungalows available but you can sleep in one of our school buses…” answered the female voice on the other side of the telephone.

We drove south and west from Wendover along the “US 50 – The Loneliest road in America” across early morning enchanted forests and vast beautiful deserted lands.

We arrived to Monroe late afternoon just in time to enjoy the sunset soaking in the warm waters of Mystic Hot Springs.

The place was mystic indeed! The owner, the producer Mike Ginsburg, had moved from Denver in 1996 when he bought the resort. He seems to have kept the place much as possible out of commercial circuits giving it a 70’s feeling.

His mission statement is: “Mystic Hot Springs creates an authentic environment which raises self-awareness by direct experience with nature, art and antiquities.”

In the main house, where he lives, he runs a professional video and sound recording studio where folk music groups come from around the country to give concerts and be recorded.

He seems to love old cars and other then a great collection of 70’s 4 wheel drive Toyotas, a long row of old school buses stand in their beauty to be used as guestrooms.

And that is where we slept that night…