Mercey Hot Springs

More and more I am using Google Maps to poke around for interesting destinations. I zoom in enough that points of interest show up along the route I plan to take, and it is often surprising what Google knows is there. That is how I discovered Mercey Hot Springs.

The springs are located in the northwest corner of Fresno County, just 13 miles west of the I-5 on Little Panoche Road. Little Panoche Road was originally the stagecoach route used by many early California settlers. I had no doubt of that as I drove it, thanking my lucky stars we only met one other vehicle on the entire 13 mile drive. The road was so narrow that I had to slow down and dip Colectiva’s right tires onto the dirt shoulder to be able to pass another vehicle of our size.

The land was originally owned by John N. Merci. Merci, who later legally changed his name to Mercy to be more “Americanized”, was a sheep rancher. Native Americans familiar with the area knew of the hot springs and showed them to Mercy.

Mercy sold the land in 1912 to Fredrick Bourn, a San Francisco real estate developer. By the 1930’s it was a hopping place with a hotel, restaurant and bar, cabins, a bath house and a swimming pool. In a move to commercially expand his business, Bourn changed the name to Mercey Hot Springs because he was not able to copyright the name “Mercy” Once he obtained the copyright he began bottling and selling the spring water, claiming all kinds of curative properties.

It’s a cute little place. Apparently most of the buildings date back to the time the property was owned by Bourn. There are open soaking tubs in the pool area with a nice sauna adjacent. Water is piped into the tubs directly from the spring source, so it is not filtered or altered in any way. The Woman believed that was true as she caught the distinct waft of sulfur.

Up on the hill, surrounded by a spite fence, is the clothing optional soaking tub area. The resort also has private soaking tubs and an onsite masseur. Bonus! The Woman had her 90 minute massage scheduled even before we parked Colectiva.

This corner of Fresno County is gorgeous. Mostly remote and scarcely inhabited, the rolling green hills – more than hills but not quite mountains – carry livestock and other residents. While having a soak yesterday we heard a symphony of coyotes howling up a storm. While we haven’t seen any four legged residents other than cattle and really fast hares, the raptor population is thick.

I also learned something today. You know how you wonder if the light in the refrigerator actually goes off when you shut the door? Well, there are other things that just work in the background and you never really know for sure if they are working. The energy management system (EMS) in Colectiva is one of those. We read all the time in RV related papers and magazines about RV parks that have bad electrical hookups. We just have never experienced that in our 10 years of RVing.

When we hooked up at Mercey Hot Springs small RV park, our power worked fine for about a half hour, then went off. I turned the power off at the pedestal but to no avail. We then assumed it was a power outage at the park, but the manager checked and the power was on. Plugging something else in at the pedestal confirmed that. So I went to the electrical panel to check the breakers and could see the message on the EMS saying that power had been shut off because the incoming voltage was too high – it got readings of between 133 and 135 volts. I asked the onsite manager if we could try another pedestal, but we got the same result – the EMS would not accept their power.

Apparently the manager called Larry, the owner, who came over to see if he could help resolve the matter. As we talked he explained that they were not on the power grid – there were no power lines running to this remote area. He used a combination of solar panels with batteries, combined with a huge inverter to create their AC power, not unlike what we do when we dry camp, or what the Earthscape homes in New Mexico do. In the summer that usually does the trick, but in the winter, with the shorter days, he has a backup generator that supplies the power when the solar battery charging is insufficient to last the night.

Anyway, it turns out that because they have a large grid on which they distribute the power, he actually does run higher voltage because of the tendency of AC voltage to degrade. He said he could actually adjust the voltage precisely with his computer, so he went back to his home and reduced the voltage by 5 volts. He came back with a voltmeter and tested the pedestal, which tested at 124 volts. We plugged in and voila! Power! We thanked Larry, and he thanked us as well. Apparently the system he was running was fairly new and he had not encountered an EMS before. We both enjoyed a learning experience.

Because Mercey is totally off the grid we had to try to go to the bathroom to find the NFL playoff games. We ended up in Los Banos – no, not a nickname for Bakersfield. Los Banos is a 1800’s era town in Merced County, likely named for being reasonably close to the hot springs baths. While the game was disappointing (really, Walsh misses a 27 yard playoff game winning fieldgoal?) we did find a little bit of a gem. In 1955 Frank Lloyd Wright designed one of his Usonian homes for Randall “Buck” and Harriet Fawcett. Buck was a college football star who had been drafted by the Bears in 1944, but instead he returned to his family farm in Los Banos to care for his ill father. While the home is a privately owned residence and not open for touring, we did search it out and clearly recognized the features of a Lloyd Wright design we have seen so many times now.

 Talk to you soon!