Back when I was a very young stinking drug-crazed hippie, I used to pile in a microbus with my buds and head out for the Mojave, behind the San Berdoo mountains, and hike into a very weird high elevation desert hot springs. We called it “Bowen Ranch” or “Deep Creek”.
It was a long trek across ridges and into canyons, and when you got there, you were greeted by a friendly assortment of dope-casualties, aging freaks and pervs of every kind. My 14 year old self, gacked to the nines as usual, was relatively impervious to these lunatics, but I did get pretty friendly with a bunch of grinning acid clowns who were always talking about Jesus and Charley and such-like. This was about 1970. I was later informed by sources no more unreliable than any others that I was keeping company with some unindicted remnants of the Manson clan. Who knows? We were all felons then. Good times…
There is plenty of material on the web about this obscure hot springs in the desert mountains near Hesperia, California; this slight history got me a little teary, thinking about all the great bouts of dysentery and frostbite I had up at the springs. Yeah.
