Thursday August 28, 25.0mi/40.2km

Stormy Wash (1181.6/6170ft) to Twelvemile Hot Springs (1156.6/5790ft) (NV)

It wasn’t windy last night and I had a glorious dry morning of hiking. Today was all roadwalking, even though it was a large gravel road, I only saw two cars all day.

I also saw this weird roadside scarecrow, dressed as a POS politician. Clearly, Nevada is not a fan either.

All morning it was beautiful clear skies, hiking South towards my next mountain range, the East Humboldts.

In the afternoon the clouds started to build, it seemed that the daily afternoon thunderstorms were back.

As I hiked closer to civilization, I was surrounded by ranches and private property. One of the few legal places to camp seemed to be at a hot springs. Perfect! This one was a 2 mile side quest, which I wouldn’t normally do, but I had the time and I needed to camp somewhere. Someone had built an interesting bridge.

It turned out to be one of my top five favorite hot springs of this trail. The entire creek was hot water!

This area is part of the failed Metropolis Project, a planned farming community in the early 1900s, which is now a ghost town. But some of the water infrastructure survived, and it made a lovely soaking spot, surrounded by rock canyon walls.

The water wasn’t too hot either, maybe only 105°F, and I sat in there for over an hour, watching the sunset.

I set up my tent across the little hot creek on a flat area, away from all the steam.

A couple showed up just after dark, maybe 8pm, and were super friendly and offered me some beverages and invited me to come soak again. I think they felt bad about keeping me awake at my camp spot, since they left less than an hour later. I fell asleep to the nice gurgling sounds of the hot springs creek.