Hike to Tomato Soup Hot Spring

We saw a notice on the bulletin board from a man from another store who was taking a moderate hike to Tomato Soup Basin. The name intrigued us and with the word "moderate" in the description we decided to give it a try. When we got to the meeting point there was a total of 14 people from all over the park ready for the hike. We took three of the young folks from Taiwan with us on the 5 mile drive to the parking area. There wasn't actually a trail so you had to know where you were going to find the Tomato Soup spring. We would never attempt it ourselves. We started out walking along Rabbit Creek.

We passed some very colorful water. We were told the color comes from bacteria and algae.

We came across a few little waterfalls.

All along there were hot springs of various sizes and colors. Our guide called this one twin ponds.

And this one was named lattice pond where trees had fallen in different directions.

It was interesting that not too far from the cool creek were other areas with water bubbling.

We had two hills to climb to get to our destination. This is the first one.

And this is the view from the top.

We rested for a bit and enjoyed the scenery and then climbed the next hill. We had to make our way through pine trees and were glad that our leader knew where he was going. Along the way were beautiful wildflowers.

We were amazed at how many hot springs appeared here and there as we walked along. There were probably many more that we did not pass.

We finally found our way to Tomato Soup and yes it did look like a big bowl of bubbling soup. There were lots of comments about crackers and grilled cheese sandwiches to go with it.

The trip back down the hills was much easier. We followed a different path and saw many other beautiful sights. This was one colorful hillside.

And a dragon fly sat still long enough for us to get a picture.

It was an interesting, enjoyable, and exhausting 4 mile hike, and we were glad that we got to see scenery that we would have never found or attempted to find on our own.