Fifth Water Hot Springs

 Mel asked if we wanted to hike to Fifth Water Hot Springs in Diamond Fork Canyon with her and Ataiya and Amarie. It's a 5 mile roundtrip hike to some natural hot springs. Rockwell and I wanted to go, and Wyatt was able to come with us too. We started on the trail at 7:30 am so we could avoid the heat of the day. We glanced at the map at the beginning of the trail, and headed on our way. I never knew there was red rock so close to us. It was a combination of red rock and green landscape and it was beautiful.

Turns out, we were on the wrong trail here too. There were enough things along the way that made us think we were on the right path based on the comments from the AllTrails app. But we definitely weren't. Again though, it was beautiful and peaceful on this trail, and we all enjoyed the hike. Luckily Mel was able to let a couple other groups know on the way down that it wasn't the trail to the hot springs and saved them a few extra miles of hiking. We all felt like we had driven all this way and really wanted to see the hot springs, so when we got back down to the parking lot, we found the other trail and headed back up for another 5 miles. :) 

This trail followed the river most the time and it was beautiful as well.

The boys started complaining about the smell and I told them we must be getting close if it was stinking. They looked at me like I was crazy. Haha! (That was one of the signs on the other trail that made us think we were getting close there. The smell ended up being cow poop all over the trail though. Gross!) The hot springs smell like sulphur. It's pretty crazy that the water is super hot out in the middle of the mountains.

There were a bunch of different pools you could soak in. It was really slippery in the water and crazy hot, but really awesome too. It was such a different destination than I've ever hiked to before.

We made our way downstream, and each pool got cooler the further away from the waterfall we got.

This last pool was their favorite. It was deep enough to swim in and had the coolest temperature.

I was so proud of Rockwell and Wyatt for hiking 10 miles! Both trails were steep, so it wasn't an easy 10 miles. They did great, and I'm so glad they were there with us.