Harry and I said goodbye to Boulder and pointed the Bug west along Route 70 into Utah’s hilly desert. Beside the road, bulbous outcroppings grew from treeless hills looking very much like the crusty flesh of giant warts. In the distance ochre mountains stood bare and wind sculpted. Atop buttes, stony crowns laced by wind reminded me of ancient temples. I wondered at the power of earth to crumble her surface and raise rock into peaks and crags and mesas. How easy it would be, then, to crush us, defenseless and vulnerable humanity.

Nevertheless, we felt safe inside the Bug’s metal shell, especially when we saw workers beside the highway step gingerly along the cliffs like agile goats to brace the slope with metal netting. At a rest stop a plaque honors highway workers who lost their lives saving ours from falling boulders. I bowed my head and gave the brave souls a moment of gratitude before crawling back into the Bug.

Throughout the trip, each afternoon we decided where we’d stop for the night, depending on how far we thought we could drive in a day. On my phone I found a campground called Mystic Mike’s Hot Springs. According to the website, Mystic Mike had rigged up old buses for sleeping beside a series of hot spring pools. The campground sounded like it might be fun, and we headed for Monroe, an hour south of Salt Lake City.

Driving into Mike’s compound, we passed dilapidated log cabins on the right, each no larger than a one-cargarage. Their roofs were rotted, windows long gone. Doors, if they existed at all, hung askew. They looked like centuries old prospector cabins, ten of them clustered in a small community. Weeds and sagebrush grew up to the height of the window openings, and rusted farm equipment decorated the fenced off property. Hopefully the settlers found gold and moved on to more comfortable accommo.

At the end of the road, Mike was working on converting a van into a camper. The license plate read “Truckin”—homage, no doubt, to the Grateful Dead. There were several other projects either finished—a bench made out of a car axel and a slab of wood—or in process with tools and pieces of metal lying around. Even though Mike looks normal enough—short hair, early forties—I figured from the works in progress, he was either a genius or a madman. I hoped for the former.

Mike was so focused on the van that he didn’t notice us when we walked up.

“We have a reservation for tonight,” I said.

He looked surprised to see us standing there.

“Sure.” He waved us into the house that doubles as office, store, and hangout. There was a worn sectional sofa facing a television screen, and along the walls were racks of hippie clothing—tie-dye shirts, long Indian bedspread skirts, scarves and wraps in bright colors, and a few bathing suits (Mike doesn’t allow nudity in the hot springs).

“Which bus do you want?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “What do you suggest?”

“Blue bus is the biggest.” He eyed us up and down, probably figuring us for Baby Boomers who might have had some wild times in our youth. “I think you’d like Ripple bus,” he concluded. “There’s only one other guest tonight. Take a look around and see which one strikes you.” He slid two thick towels across the counter.

I discovered that Mike had gone to the University of Colorado. He liked the area so much that after he graduated he scraped together some money to buy a piece of land and set up his campground enterprise. He’s a trusting soul and didn’t ask to see I.D. or question us about where we were from or anything else about us. I had paid for the night online, and that’s all he needed to know.

Just outside the office, Mike had built four cabins similar to the dilapidated ones, but these were newer and tighter. They were for rent by the night, but we wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to sleep in a bus. Down a little rise, we found a dozen old buses parked diagonally in a row. Blue bus was a huge Greyhound type rig with a mountain landscape painted on the side. Inside were a double bed, two singles and a port-o-potty. Blue was more than we needed. Besides, there was a bathhouse with showers and toilets nearby.

Mike was correct that Ripple bus was more our style, smaller and maybe used at one time to transport rural school children. It was rusting and its tires sagged, but the outside had been painted a cheerful baby blue. Mike had put down a wood floor and installed pretty antique cabinets. One seat-height cupboard was made cozy with Victorian fringed pillows. Indian bedspreads covered the windows. The queen size platform bed was made up with soft jersey sheets, four quilts, and lots of pillows for reclining. An electric heater made the bus comfy on the chilly evening. Over the bed, a string of little lights gave the bus a festive atmosphere.

We got into our swimsuits and headed for the hot springs, passing the empty swimming pool that Mike said he plans to turn into a greenhouse. On the hill above the house-office-hangout, spring water surges hot and steaming out of the ground and dribbles into six claw-foot bathtubs connected by narrow footpaths. The sun was getting low, the temperature dipping to fifty, and the water in the tubs was only lukewarm. We chose instead to slip into the larger concrete pool where hot mineral water cascaded over orange rock directly into the pool. The mushroom-shaped rock must have been formed by hardening minerals in the spring water.

By the time we emerged from the water, the sky was putting on a show of brilliant pink, and we shivered our way back to Ripple bus.

The inside was warm and smelled sweetly of incense. Four decades evaporated, and we were in our twenties again, giggling at each other as we flopped onto the bed. Harry had found a tattered cardboard box in one of the cupboards. He looked at me and grinned.

“Want to play Scrabble?” he asked.

I laughed and said, “Absolutely.” At home we play Scrabble on his iPad—but at Mystic Mike’s with no internet service, we played the old fashioned way. It was a close game, but I squeaked out a victory with the last few letters.

After we unplugged the string of lights, a strong wind kept me awake for a while, but then I drifted into a deep, refreshing sleep. I awoke just before dawn and dashed out through the frigid March air toward the bathhouse while in the east lights from a town—Salina probably—twinkled across the valley.

In July, Mystic Mike hosts a four-day music festival. He books lots of bands and schedules permaculture workshops, yoga and meditation, and what he calls “geothermania,” referring, I suppose, to the hot springs. I pictured a Birkenstock and hemp-clad crowd smelling of Doctor Bronner’s peppermint oil soap, their pockets bulging with salt crystals.

“Do you want to come back for the festival?” I asked Harry. He shook his head. I agreed. Our musical heroes—Jerry, Jimi, Janice, and Joe—were long gone, so we climbed into the new high-tech Bug and started truckin’ on down the road.