The Hot Springs Weekend

🔑 In the door

Check-in is after 4:00 PM with keypad entry, so nobody is meeting you and nothing is waiting on you. Bags in, coats and boots to the entry, wood stove lit first. It is the slowest thing in the house to get going and the whole night improves once it does.

🛒 Safeway, once

Under a mile from the cabin, under 5 minutes, open 6 am to 11 pm daily. Friday dinner, two breakfasts, and a cooler lunch for tomorrow. Buy far more water than feels necessary. Fraser sits around 8,600 to 8,800 feet and you are about to spend most of a day in hot water, which is a combination that dehydrates people faster than they expect.

🔥 A-Frame setup

Fire going. Music on. Drinks poured. Bags unpacked. Lights low. Sixty unhurried minutes so the cabin stops being a rental and starts being where you are staying.

🍳 Cook the first night

I would actually cook Friday. Do not immediately go to dinner. Full kitchen, grill on the patio, table for six. You have two meals out ahead of you and only one first night in front of this fire.

🎒 Build the soak bag now

Doing this tonight is the difference between leaving at 8:45 and leaving at 9:40.

• Swimsuits, two towels per person, flip flops or slides.
• A plastic bag for wet suits on the drive home.
• Hair ties, a water bottle each, sunscreen regardless of season.
• A card. Day passes are bought at the door.
• Cooler packed and by the door, not in the fridge where you will forget it.

Then sit by the fire. Board games are in the cabin.

☕ Breakfast at the table

Pod coffee and a proper breakfast at the cabin. Eat more than you think you need. You are not going to want to think about food again for several hours.

🚙 West along the river

Granby is 25 to 30 minutes down the valley, and Hot Sulphur Springs sits west of there where the Colorado River runs through town. It is a genuinely pretty drive and nobody is in a hurry.

♨️ Nineteen pools, no reservation

Hot Sulphur Springs Resort is the centerpiece of this weekend and it earns it. A day pass covers all 19 public hot mineral pools, gravity fed down the hillside, each one a slightly different temperature. Doors are open 8 AM to 9:45 PM with last entry at 9:15 PM, and here is the part that makes it easy: walk-ins are welcome, no reservations, no maximum capacity. You cannot get shut out.

How I would do it: start warm, work up the hill to the hotter pools, and give yourself a full cold-air break between the top two. In summer there is also one large chlorinated swimming pool if the kids need somewhere to actually swim. Private baths are a separate thing and do take a one-hour reservation.

🥪 Cooler lunch, sitting in the sun

This is why you packed it last night. Eat, drink an entire bottle of water, and go back in for a second round if the group still has one in them. Most groups do.

🚙 Home, gently

Back up the valley to Fraser. Somebody will fall asleep in the back seat. Everybody's shoulders will have dropped two inches.

🪵 Rinse and do nothing

Showers, wet suits hung somewhere sensible, towels straight into the washer/dryer. Then stove restocked and everyone flat. This is where I would not schedule anything, and after a day of mineral pools you would not manage it anyway.

🥩 Saturday is the night you go out

Tabernash Tavern has been running as a New American restaurant and wine bar in downtown Tabernash since 2008, known for prime dry-aged steaks and carrying a Wine Spectator award. Alternative: Fraser Valley Distilling, family owned since 2018, distilling its own bourbon, agave spirits, and gin with a scratch kitchen behind it. Note that they are open Wednesday through Saturday only, so tonight is one of the nights it works.

🔥 Firepit

Out to the firepit for as long as the cold allows, which in Fraser is a shorter window than most people expect. Then back in to the stove. Pack the car tonight if you have the energy; Sunday is easier for it.

🍳 Slow breakfast

Sunday should feel different from Saturday. Cook the rest of the eggs, drink coffee at the table, run the last load of laundry so you drive home with dry towels.

📦 Pack the car, then check out

Checkout is before 10:00 AM. Load everything, sweep the loft for chargers, check the bathroom for the swimsuit somebody left hanging. Then the day has no deadline in it.

🚙 North to the lake

The Rocky Mountain National Park entrance at Grand Lake is about 33 miles from Fraser, roughly 50 minutes, up Highway 40 through Granby and then north on Highway 34. It is one of the better hours of driving in Colorado and it is entirely on the way to nothing, which is the point.

🌊 Grand Lake

The town sits on the shore of Colorado's largest natural lake and calls itself the western gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park, which for once is not marketing. Walk the boardwalk, sit by the water, and grab lunch in town at whatever looks right when you get there. If you would rather hold out, Fuego Azteca back in Fraser is open Sundays from 10:00 am and everything is cooked fresh to order.

If you are here between mid September and mid October, drive a little way into the park's west side. Peak aspen color and the elk rut land in the same window, and dusk is when you hear the bugling.

🚙 Back through the valley

Same road, opposite direction, quieter car. You are heading home through Granby and Fraser either way, so nothing about this is a detour.

☕ One last stop in Fraser

Grand County Roastery on Zerex Street roasts in house and is open every day, 6 am to 6 pm. Coffee for the road and a bag of beans to take the weekend home with you. Then gas at the Sinclair on Market Street.

👋 Roll out

Out by four so the drive home stays sane. Denver is about 71 miles and roughly an hour and a half when the road cooperates.