I wish I was here...

We are almost ready for our road trip. The flat is empty. We have shipped what we wanted to, given away almost everything else, ditched the rest. And I am knackered. I shall comfort myself with memories from two weekends ago, when I looked a little like this:

Fortunately I wasn't actually a destructive throwback to creatures from millions of years ago. I just looked like one. I had a mud bath at Indian Springs Resort in Calistoga. Bliss. Well I thought it was bliss. You lie naked on a tank of hot black volcanic mud, then a nice lady spreads more clods of mud over your body and there you lie encased for about 10 minutes, after which you are scraped off, you shower off (takes ages as that mud gets everywhere) and step into a mineral bath. And this was only the beginning. That afternoon I was also steamed, laid down for a rest with cucumber on my eyes (Girls: did you eat the cucumber, Mama?), had a long massage, and finally a facial. After all that I had no backbone left and wobbled my way back to our cottage to lie down. I haven't felt that blissed out and mellow in years.

The next morning, we (there were two families of us there) headed to the pool. A volcanically heated hot Olympic sized mineral pool. We spent all day there lying around. More bliss.

I am already planning a return visit - perfect first stop to cure jetlag. What do you think?

Acknowledgements: Thank you so much to Moriah for taking us and to my multitude of friends for the treatments.