My Trip to Warner Springs

This weekend was my one year anniversary with my boyfriend and in lieu of gifts we took a trip the Warner Springs Ranch in east San Diego.  I had never been to Warner Springs and I was very pleasantly surprised.  It’s a beautiful place with plenty of things to do like hiking, horse back riding, tennis, plane gliding, and of course relaxing in the hot springs.  My boyfriends’ family goes to Warner Springs every Thanksgiving and after this trip I can see why.

We got there Friday night, had some dinner and went straight to the hot springs.  The actual hot springs are about 140 degrees and are way too hot to soak in so they pump the spring water into a huge pool where they cool it off.  After they cool it off, it’s the perfect tempurature, still very warm, but not overwelming.  They have these bouys that you can float on, relax and stare at the stars.  That Friday night, it was a full moon which made the night sky even more beautiful.

The next day we decided to go hiking in the morning.  We really didn’t know where we were going, we just knew we wanted to go to the top of this big mountain behind the resort.  We started walking down a road that goes to the water tower on the outside of the resort hoping to find a trail.  We ran into some people who told us there was a trail down the road on the left that loops around the mountain.  We thanked them and headed down the road to find the trial.

Somehow we missed the trail, found what we thought was the trail and started walking into the wilderness.  It didn’t take us long to realize there was no trail, but just a bunch of prickly bushes and cactus.  We decided to keep moving through the rough landscape in hopes of finding something that would lead us to the top the mountain.  After getting scratched up, we had had enough and decided to head back to find the trial we missed.  My boyfriend was sweet enough to carry me on his shoulders so I would get scratched by the bushes again.

Finally we found the trial, yea!!!  And it was a beautiful hike.  We stopped where they’re was some large rock formations to take a breather.  We could see the people we ran into before making their way down the rest of the trail.  After about 20 minutes of relaxation and taking in the scenery, we got back on the trail we saw the group on before.  Somehow again, without realizing it, we missed the loop.  The trail we were on kept getting smaller and steeper.  Half way up the rest of the mountain, we realized this couldn’t be the trail they were on because they had small kids with them and this was pretty treacherous.

We decided the heck with it and kept going.  We wanted to get to the top of that mountain.  After getting scratched up again, we finally reached a peak!  It wasn’t the peak we intentionally planned on, but it was a peak nonetheless!  It was beautiful as you can see in the photos below.  It felt so good to do this hike in the morning and by the time we were finished, it was only about 1pm so we had the rest of the day to do whatever we wanted.

The end of the trial led us to the horse stables which was perfect because that was definitely something I wanted to do that day.  We walked around and petted all the horses.  They are such beautiful sweet animals.

After the horse stables my boyfriend took me on the tour of the rest of the ranch.  Basically Warner Springs ranch is made up of many little cottages to stay in.  There’s a main hall with a restaurant, bar, library and game room.  The cottages are adorable and all of them are surrounded by beautiful landscaping.  After the tour we were pretty beat, so we spent the rest of the day relaxing.  We hit up the hot springs again and chilled by the fire in the cabin.  All in all I had an amazing time and I can’t wait to do again.  Check out more pictures of our trip below.

Tags: Beautiful Place, Bouys, Boyfriends, Bushes, East San Diego, Friday Night, Full Moon, hiking, Hot Springs, Landscape, Night Sky, Pool, Shoulders, Spring Water, Tempurature, Thanksgiving, Walking Down A Road, Warner Springs Ranch, Water Tower, Wilderness, Year Anniversary