Susan and I visited Faywood Hot Springs in southwestern New Mexico for the third time, 11-15 October 2002.<br><br>Getting There<br>We flew Southwest Airlines from Cleveland to El Paso. We are regulars on Southwest, and know the drill, and love the $99 price. We rented a Mercury Sable from Hertz via the Southwest website for $21.99 a day, and received a free tank of gas with a coupon from AAA. The first time we landed in El Paso we thought we may as well have been landing on the moon. We are more used to it now, but the desert/mountain landscape remains stunning to us. Faywood Hot Springs is just over a two hour drive from the El Paso airport—a straight shot down I-10 and then up 180 from Deming. Once into New Mexico you will experience an immigration checkpoint, where it is only necessary to say something Midwestern-sounding, like “Hello,” to get waved right through. <br><br>Faywood Hot Springs<br>Faywood offers tent camping, RV hookups, and four comfortable cabins. We have been in the same cabin (Consuelo) each time, but imagine they are all the same: a double bed; bathroom with shower/bathtub; kitchenette with mini-fridge, microwave, coffee maker, sink, plates, glasses, cups, pitcher, and utensils; table and chairs; and a closet. A ladder takes you up to a loft that can be fitted with a futon if you have extra people. A screened porch provides additional room, and you also have your own picnic table and BBQ grill out back. There is no daily housekeeping service, but everything is always spotless when we arrive. The $80 a night for a cabin includes one hour in one of the private pools, or the private hot tub.<br>    The office at Faywood sells bottled water, sodas, and ice. For anything else you will have to drive to a store. The nearest mini-mart is in Hurley, a good fifteen minutes north. There are supermarkets in Deming, twenty-five minutes south, and a Super Wal-Mart in Silver City, thirty minutes north.<br>    Everyone is locked in from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. (as one year-round RV camper told me, “I live in a gated community for $200 a month”).<br><br>The Pools<br>There are four sets of hot mineral water pools at Faywood: the private pools, the public clothing-required pools, the public clothing-optional pools, and the newest pools, which are for campers and overnight guests only (these are also clothing-optional). All are outdoors, surrounded by fences. All have sitting/lounging areas, and the public pools are also attractively landscaped. In each area you will have your choice of pools, each with a different soaking temperature. The clothing-optional pools are truly that: there are no nude Nazis here requiring folks to get naked.<br>    If you’ve ever visited a yucky poorly-maintained hot spring facility you will really appreciate how clean these pools are kept. And since these are not sulfur springs you will emerge perfectly refreshed without any residual odor.<br><br>Typical Day<br>Get up with the sun and walk 150' to the campers’ pools. Have a conversation with someone who was once stranded on an ice floe off a glacier in Alaska. At some point the door to the pools will crack open, and a man clad only in a poncho will peer in. Not wanting contact with other humans, he will go off in search of another pool. Soon a man with an English accent joins us. Turns out he was one of the last British officials to leave Hong Kong after it was returned to the Chinese, and he has many interesting stories about that, and about growing up in colonial Africa.<br>    Enjoy coffee and breakfast on our porch, or if it is too cold, inside the heated cabin. Take a walk around the campgrounds, enjoying the lizards and the roadrunners and the view to the mountains, saying good morning to folks we’ve met, and folks we haven’t. Someone will always have a picture-worthy rig: a jeep combined with a bus, an army-green truck with smiley faces, a bus just like the one the Partridge Family used. When we notice that someone has spray painted their little dog pink, we just smile and think, “That’s Faywood.”<br>    Soon it’s time for our hour in the private pool. We like the Big Dipper best, but depending on your temperature preferences you may also enjoy the Watsu or Blue Moon pools, or the Jalapeno hot tub.<br>    For lunch we drive to Silver City and enjoy the healthy deli-style fare at Vicki’s. Emerging from lunch we see many more pink dogs, and green dogs, dogs dressed like Batman and Robin, and dogs in outer space gear. It’s the annual Dog Parade and no one had even told us! This is a hoot, and once the fifty or so dogs and their people have paraded off toward the courthouse we spend time in some of the (expensive) art galleries. Silver City may once have had a more diversified economy, but today it seems to depend upon art and real estate. One shopkeeper told us, “We’re becoming more like Santa Fe everyday.” We had no idea if that was supposed to be good or bad, but from her general demeanor we imagined she was worried about it.<br>    Get back in plenty of time for a nice soak before dinner. Arrive at the public clothing-optional pools and find a spirited discussion about inheritance taxes already underway. Why the passion, I wonder after a while, surely we are facing more pressing issues as a nation. “Because my mom left me $8 million and the government is taking half of it,” the young man next to me says. Oh. <br>    For dinner it’s into Deming, a real town with real people and dogs that have not been dyed, right past several tourist-trap type restaurants for a wholesome Mexican meal at Irma’s. I know I won’t enjoy real Chile Relleno again until I return to New Mexico, so I relish each bite. For white tablecloth dining in Deming, Elon Yurwit of Faywood Hot Springs recommends the new Drake’s, which is on our list for next time.<br>    After dinner there’s still time for hours of soaking. Once we shared a pool with a woman who knew all of the constellations (and there are far more stars than we ever see at home—on a clear night there are almost more stars than sky). From several veteran soakers, we have learned how soaking in a hot spring will produce an aura that will surround you for days, although the lithium high may last for only a few hours. One warned us to stay away from a powerful crystal displayed at an establishment in Deming. We’ve also had more conventional conversations with doctors, engineers, government officials, and professors in several disciplines. One time we were interrogated by a couple who were intensely interested in nude beaches we had visited, wanting to know which ones were “100% legal.” It turned out they were nudist police officers—from Las Vegas! If Richard who lives at Faywood eight months a year turns up you are sure to have a great conversation. He is an ordained minister (“I can marry you, and bury you, and other than that you’re on your own”) with great stories about his years in Mexico, and other adventures all the way back to his former life in Silicon Valley.<br>    Both of us sleep real well after a good Faywood soak, but if you can’t—the pools are open all night.<br><br>Timing<br>Our visits to Faywood have been in January, March, and October. In January it was certainly stimulating to plunge into hot water when it was 11 degrees outside. In March it was windy but a lot of people were there, so there was never any shortage of those great hot springs conversations. In October it was nice to see leaves on the trees which grow in the Faywood oasis, and to be able to keep the cabin windows open. Our conclusion is that there is no bad time to visit Faywood Hot Springs.<br><br>Daytrips<br>Faywood makes a great base to explore a whole section of New Mexico. Worthwhile excursions include<br>• Gila Cliff Dwellings. In Ohio these would be fenced off and we’d look at them from a few hundred feet away. In New Mexico you can walk right through them. Neat!<br>• Lightfeather Hot Spring: a beautiful short hike to a wild hot spring—bring your own camp shovel. And remember that the water is coming out of the cliff at 150 degrees!<br>• A horseback ride to see prehistoric petroglyphs with Sid Cates, a genuine New Mexican who lives across the road from Faywood Hot Springs.<br>• Columbus (the last U.S. town to be invaded)<br>• Palomas (where the invaders came from; lots of touristy border town things, but it’s worth a walk into Mexico for great fresh-fruit ices and inexpensive prescription medicines).<br>• Pinos Altos, a funny little town up in the pine forest with an excellent restaurant (The Buckhorn, whose bar also has great live folk and blues music); a curious gift shop/museum staffed by a kindly man, his 91-year old mom, and an ancient dog; and an ice cream shop where the locals were too busy chatting amongst themselves to sell ice cream to tourists, so we left.<br>    And many other wild hot springs, ghost towns, and curiosities that Faywood proprietors Elon and Wanda would be happy to tell you about. Visit their website at http://www.faywood.com for full details.<br><br>Susan and I have traveled a lot over the past year, and when someone asked us “What place have you been that is most unlike the United States?” we both answered, “New Mexico.” We meant that in the best way. It’s beautiful, uncrowded, easy-to-get-to, and completely unlike home. And the hot water feels so good. A long weekend of Faywood soaks and New Mexico open spaces is our idea of perfect relaxation