The drive, and the order of the day
From the cabins it is north into Markleeville and west up the Hot Springs Road, about six and a half miles — twelve minutes. The pools run Friday through Monday, 10am to 7pm, in five sessions — 10:00, 11:45, 1:30, 3:45 and 5:30, an hour and a half each, first come first served — so a soak fits either end of a day on the river: the first session, or the 5:30 after.
Phone the pool before you load the towels: (530) 694-2249. The schedule is the one fact on this page that moves. The pools close for two weeks of maintenance each fall, usually the last week of September through the first week of October, and on the morning we last checked the state's own website said open in two places and closed in a third. Everything else about the park — what it costs, the two walks from the same parking lot, why the water is hot, what the 2021 fire did — is on our Grover Hot Springs page.
What you sleep in
The park's campground has seventy-six sites. Twelve minutes away, the choice widens.
Seven cabins on the row, each sleeping four, named for a piece of local history and open year-round. Eleven numbered riverside sites on the East Fork that take a tent or an RV, one rate, no hookups. Fifteen RV spaces up top with full 20/30/50-amp hookups, water and sewer, booked by phone. Restrooms and showers are free and unlocked for anyone staying. Dogs are welcome in every cabin and on every site. The cabins, the sites and the rates, and what's open for your dates.
Between the soak and the river
The state plants trout in the water out front from May through October; the special-regulation canyon water starts a mile downstream. The store on the property sells ice, firewood, tackle and cold drinks and is the last stop before Monitor and Ebbetts passes. There is free Wi-Fi and no cell signal anywhere on the property, so the store's landline is the number that works: (530) 694-2229.
Dogs are welcome in the park on a leash and are not allowed in the pool complex — they can wait on the porch. And if you would rather walk than soak, the meadow boardwalk from the pool parking lot is 0.84 miles each way and accessible; the waterfall trail is about two and a half miles round trip and finishes over a boulder field.
