We finally made it to the Hot Springs area after a 4.11-mile hike. We could smell sulphur on the air in a little grotto with a granite overhang. I was slowing down because any seep or standing water could signal an orchid. My fondest wish was to find one and nary one on this trip. Of course, on all my other trips in the USA, I never found a terrestrial (earthbound) orchid, either. I found orchids in proliferation on hikes with Michele Burdet in the Alps of Switzerland, and they were wonderful to photograph, but none here. I was REALLY bummed out about this. Every trip, I looked forward to finding an orchid--any orchid--but nada.
We also found Shooting Stars at this grotto, so I photographed them. It was the only place on this 4.11-mile hike, one-way, that we saw. That was a find in itself!
We crested the hill, and this stone-and-redwood building stood out gracefully, and we got excited about getting in! We finally found someone, and he was walking down the road (We discovered there was a dirt road into the place. Before, we thought the only way you could reach this place was by trail--silly us). We asked if we could use the hot springs, and he said it didn’t open until 10am. It was 8:30am. I was so bummed. He also added that Thursday was their cleaning day and you could hear equipment down below us making a lot of noise.
What an absolute bummer! We glumly thanked him and found a place to sit down. I had to get my feet out of these wet socks. As I pulled off my first boot, water ran out of it. NOT a good sign. Great. I took the second one off. More water. Dave said that I did a good job of getting wet. I took off my socks and squeezed about a quarter cup of water out of each of them.
Well, our towel was going to be used to dry off my water-soaked feet. I asked Dave if he had any plastic bags in his pack. What my thinking was: dry my feet off; put on my nice, thick, dry socks; put them each into a plastic bag; and then put my soaking-wet hiking boots back on. He thought that was a creative idea, and we found one plastic bag from a store and one 1-gallon Ziploc bag. Perfect! At least I wouldn’t have wet, soggy feet or blisters on a 4.11-mile return trip.
And no hot springs. What crap. I was NOT in a good mood at this point.
But, little Chipmunks, fat buggers for sure, used to tourists, approached us. After I got my feet dried off and in warm, comforting socks, I put the towel on the ground and my feet on top of it. Dave threw some Fritos to the chippies, and here they came! We sat there resting, eating a sandwich and restoring our water as they entertained us.
We decided, at 8:50am, to leave. I was really grumpy, because I had so longed to come here and have a good mineral soak, sort of a dream come true. But they were closed.
As we started back down the trail, my feet were fine in the plastic bags within my boots.
We stopped again at the little grotto where the Shooting Stars were. "There could be orchids around here," I told Dave. The soil was right, the water was right. I peered over and over again around the grotto and saw nothing.
"Hell," I muttered defiantly as I turned back to the path, "there aren’t any orchids around here anywhere..." and I was, again, bummed.
But then, my eye caught a bright red stem no more than 50 feet down on the bank under some pine-needled area. What was it? I then recognized the red stems that I had seen at the Lower Fish Falls--and taken photos of. They had not bloomed out, so they were just red stems sticking up out of the dry, brown pine needles. I thought they were a parasitic plant, Orobranche, that has a bright red stem, too.
Oh, well, I thought, I might as well photograph the Orobranche in bloom. As I got down, squinting because it was in deep, dark shade and my eyes aren’t great, I realized I was not looking at Orobranche.
"Oh, my god, Dave!" I screeched. "It’s an ORCHID! An ORCHID!!!" I dropped to my knees, hunkered down, and took a good look at it. Yes, sir, it WAS an orchid. I sat there gasping, filled with joy and shock. Dave was leaning over and admiring it, too.
"I’ll be darned," he said. "An orchid. Finally."
Well! My grumpiness disappeared in a flash. The hot springs was completely forgotten. I knelt there with shaking hands, taking 40 photographs of this beautiful little orchid in bloom. I had no idea what kind it was at the time, and it didn’t matter. It was an ORCHID. It has six petals and the lower lip was wide, flat, and white,with purple spots on it. When I realized that I had photographed the SAME orchid, not in bloom, at Lower Fish Creek Falls headwaters, I just shook my head. It just goes to show you that without something in bloom, you can easily misidentify it. I later was able to identify it as a coral root orchid from one of the flower ID books I’d bought here in Steamboat Springs. Too cool.
My whole week was anchored in finding this one orchid. What a GIFT! I was delirious with happiness. I photographed that orchid in every possible perspective and angle. It was only about 10 inches tall, and I had missed it coming up the trail. Only coming down the trail, slowing and looking because it was good orchid area, did I see it. And even then, you could easily miss it in the deep shade. But the red stem stood out, flashing at me like a big, red stoplight.
Wow, this was a million times better than a hot springs!