Travertine Hot Springs

One of my favorite activities to do with my husband is road tripping, especially if they are spontaneous or semi-spontaneous. The past few years out of college, I've slowly grown to become a pretty big planner (and a very detail-oriented one when it came to my wedding / comes to traveling). So to be able to just throw some clothes and toiletries together in a duffle bag, hop in the car, and drive away on a semi-spontaneous trip (decided just a few days before) to Travertine Hot Springs in Bridgeport, CA at the end of 2017 was quite great. Other than wanting to seeing the natural hot springs, we had nothing else planned.

Another reason why I love going on road trips with Clay is because it gives us time to just talk with no distractions - no phones (Reddit for him / Instagram for me), laptops (work, e-mails to respond to, etc.), or TV shows running in the background - just us and the scenery outside our car windows. I remember back in 2013, the very first road trip we went on together was to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, which involved a 12+ hour drive. Later, another 12+ hour road trip we went on together was to Crater Lake and Portland. These days, we've come to accept that we just don't have as much energy for such long road trips anymore, so this 6 hour one to Bridgeport was just right. Just enough time to reflect on the past year and share our resolutions and hopes for the upcoming new year. Time to have some serious conversations about things that have been on our minds and time to just be silly/goofy/weird together in the car. Just for these talks that we get to have while driving, I am thankful for these road trips!

Anyway, we stayed two nights at Walker River Lodge, one of two main hotels in Bridgeport...which is really just one main street with the Mono County Court House and some other small restaurants and shops. Almost all of them were closed for the holiday weekend (or for the entire winter haha). Some personal highlights of our weekend included: waking up at 6:30am to catch the sunrise at Travertine Hot Springs, eating cheesy chicken alfredo pizza at the Virginia Creek Settlement Restaurant, walking through Bodie State Historic Park (a historic gold mining town turned ghost town), and watching Will Smith movies together in our little hotel room. Couldn't have asked for a more chill, low-key getaway to end the year with.