The 2.5-mile trail from Bowen Ranch Road to the Deep Creek Hot Springs is the shortest official route in the San Bernardino National Forest, and still we managed to get lost. Deep Creek is a remote thermal spring and hippie hideaway halfway to Barstow, and we’d driven the two hours up from Los Angeles, through Hesperia, and then across winding, rutted dirt roads to find it. At the ranch entrance, Mike, the gray-ponytailed and shirtless desert surfer who runs the place, warned us that he didn’t want to “have to do another search and rescue today.” Then he gave us a copy of a hand-drawn, clearly not-to-scale area map with less cartographic credibility than a place mat from Red Lobster. There were eight travelers in our party, eight drunken interpreters of this... More >>>