Geological Time, p. 21
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  Our base of operations during this phase of our thermal quest was the Soldier Meadows Guest Ranch. This family-owned working cattle ranch, one of the largest and most remote in the country, operates on a half-million acre spread of public and private lands. With only 11 rooms the ranch offers visitors a close-up view of cowboy life; guests who are not on a hot springs hajj can even join a cattle drive.

Meals at the ranch were enlivened by the storytelling skills of Mackey Hedges, the manager of the ranch and the author of the award-winning novel The Last Buckaroo. Ask Mack a question and you’ll get a spontaneous whopper, which begins seriously enough, but then seamlessly morphs into a just-plausible-enough tall tale.

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Click to see a close-up of the layered rock.
 We enjoyed a roller-coaster 4Runner ride and then a hike up into High Rock Canyon. It is actually possible to drive the entire length of the canyon with a sturdy high-clearance vehicle. But by driving up from Soldier Meadows and then walking through the canyon we were able to take in the smaller pleasures: the wind-sculpted formations, the trail-side stream which must’ve been a godsend to the pioneers, and the multilayered rocks of the canyon walls.
The Soldier Meadows area is riddled with thermal features, from tiny pools barely large enough for one bather, to a warm-water marsh and a miniature lake. Our favorite was one that wasn’t in our guidebook. We took a wrong turn on our trek to High Rock Canyon and just happened upon a jewel of a pond halfway down the valley, with a view of the meadows below it and the Black Rock Range beyond.


Our favorite of the Soldier Meadows hot springs.
 
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