Lava Hot Springs Highlights

First, I must tell you, despite my lack of excitement beforehand, Lava is a GREAT place to be! Seriously...I wanna go back, like, RIGHT NOW! Super-fun. For reals.

Okay, so, this is where we stayed:

It's called Aura Soma Lava, and we stayed in the Conference Center. There are 7 twin beds, and 2 hide-a-beds, plus plenty of room for air mattresses and such. I got to sleep on the landing:

(I've always wanted to sleep on a stair landing. Seriously!)

It has it's own private hot springs pool:

(which was not filled when we got there -

some lame excuse about how they have to refill while adding cold city water, or it's too hot, so they didn't like to do it the day before? Whatever. Because they were also mowing the lawn when we arrived...I wish I was kidding.)

It has a great little yard and patio area that looks out on the river:

(The river on which we went tubing. (Of which I have no pictures. Because, though there were some of our party that chose not to tube, they did not think to come take pictures of us screaming and hooting as we went over the "rapids" under one of the many bridges. And I didn't think to ask until later.) Suffice it to say...it was AWESOME! Can I go again? Like, right now? Pretty please?)

Um, but, first things first - the reason we were there - my youngest brothers' wedding:

This kid, the ring-bearer, would not move out of the way. I don't know why. He kept wandering around in front of the bridal couple. I don't know if the photographer got any better shots than I did, but I sure hope so. Mine were too shady to see their faces.

We had a nice dinner,

and a lovely evening. As it was getting dark, I was wandering the little field next to our place,

(These guys are in the center of one of those spirals, the kind you walk for meditation? There were a couple of Chinese dog statues in the middle, too.)

and looked up at the hillside (not mountain) to see they had a sort of lame little L outlined in lights:

Which, to me, looked rather flimsy after a week of seeing the Y lit up in Provo.

The next morning, we had a hearty breakfast, got ourselves packed up, and headed out to get some tubes so we could have some fun! (not that the wedding wasn't fun, because it was)

The tube rental is super-cheap. Only $5 for a half-day on a single! We got a quad, and, I have to say, I'd do that again, and get strangers to go with me, rather than go down on a single. It's safer, I think. And more fun, because your people are right there with you, and you don't have to try to hold on to them, they're just there.

One tip: when you come to the rocky bits (of which there are many, hence the "rapids" and mini waterfalls), keep your butt up out of the hole. I have this massive bruise on my hind-parts. Massive.

You do have to walk back up (or get someone in your party to drive down and haul you and the tubes back up, which we didn't), but, even though we floated down quite a ways, it's not a bad walk back to the starting point. It never seemed like it was tiring. There's this path by the river, so you walk most of the way back along that. Then, at one point, you have to cross a bridge. I wish I had a picture of this one, because every time we walked up to it, it had me giggling. The little sign next to the bridge said "Tuber Path" with an arrow pointing over the bridge. It just struck me funny: now we're potatoes? or maybe rutabagas?

I had gone around, before tubing down the river for the first time, slathering sunscreen on everyone. Rubbing the serious stuff on their noses and tops of their ears. Making sure everyone was well-rubbed with sunscreen. Except, I guess, I only got Twin1's face. Because his poor ankles got seriously burnt:

Funny story here...he says I can show you this picture of his bare feet, but only if I share the whole story. So, what happened is, my friend did glitter toes on my sisters and my nieces, and then my baby sister went out to get ultra-fine glitter so she could do them herself on whoever might want them, once we were in Lava. She does my aunt, my mom, the brides' grandma (!). Then, my niece asks Twin1 if he'd like some, too. He says, "sure, nobody will know, because I always wear shoes and socks" (true). We knew we'd be wearing water shoes while tubing (a must - do not wear flip-flops - they just come off your feet and get lost), so no chance of anyone seeing them even then. But, then he sunburned, and he couldn't stand to have socks or shoes on, and he spent a whole day and a half wearing flip-flops and showing off his glitter toes. Yup. I'm glad he can see the humor in that situation. My niece kept offering him polish remover, but he said, no, it was a funny story, so he was cool with it.

Anyway, there's some of the highlights. I could go on. I'll probably come back to it, share more funny stories. A good trip, and a great place to stay and have some fun.