California South
outdoor swimming pools, and indoor tubs, cold plunge, sauna, steamroom
bathing suit req
fee $$ (cold season $42 F-Sun, $30 weekdays; hot season is higher)
notes: Unconfirmed hours: 9am to 5:30pm.
address: 25000 Glen Ivy Rd., Corona, CA 91719
how to get there: 8 miles south of Corona, on Glen Ivy
Road off Temescal Canyon Road.
phone: 909-277-3529
shelter: none on site, but many lodging choices in the
city of Corona. Many package deals include admission to Glen Ivy.
food: two snack bars serving sandwiches, drinks
including wine and beer.
payment accepted: unknown
massage: yes, plus mud baths, theraputic body treatments, and full service salon.
temperature: variety incl cold plunge
See the map
Posts
4 comments:
June 1999
Glen Ivy Hot Springs Spa
25000 Glen Ivy Road
Corona, Ca. 91719
I-15 to Temescal Canyon Road, Glen Ivy Road, to the end to the Spa.
(800)454-8772 reservations (for salon services only). No admittance
under 16 years old.
Glen Ivy has a very organized marketing effort going. You can locate
them on the Web, order faxes about their services, and/or wade through
the voicemail on the 800 number to reserve salon services. They don't
take reservations for the use of the pools, just the wraps, facials and
massages. Considering how crowded the place was on a Thursday afternoon,
I can imagine that there would be an unpleasant bottleneck kind of
situation on weekends. The place is located in a very small desert town,
tucked to one side of an RV park. With all the dust and the general
rural feel of the surroundings, I was really suprised at the clean,
modern, organized feel of the place. It was actually pretty posh. The
fees are $24 a day mid week, and $27 a day on weekends. You cross a dirt
and paved parking lot and enter a nicely landscaped resort, entering
through a gift shop stocked with the stuff they know you forgot to
bring.
This in NOT the Au Naturale experience. Things are clinically clean,
laid out in measured geometric configurations to get the most bodies
through in the most efficient manner. Locals tell me they renovated the
shower/locker facilities, and they are nice, if crowded. (Outside of the
locker facilities, bathing suits are required.) They provide towels,
hairdryers, and shampoo/conditioner/body wash. There is a comfortable
sitting room alongside the lockers. They have saunas and a steam room in
each locker room area; they are brand new, spotlessly clean, and they
are not fooling around about the temperatures. The experienced steam
and sauna client will appreciate them, but the uninitiated should take
extra care to load up on the water, and watch burns from jewelry heating
up. (A side note about jewelry- leave the ornaments with a high silver
content at home, the sulfur in the mineral baths will accelerate the
oxidization of silver in a hurry, including that contained in
lower-karat gold pieces.) There are water stations in the lockers, but
for the rest of the spa, they leave those out in the hopes you will buy
the beverages they have for sale at the two or three snack bars
alongside the pools.
They specifically tell you to bring an old bathing suit because the red
clay can permanently stain many fabrics. But when you get inside, you
will find that Glen Ivy is also a see-and-be-seen resort. The regulars
sport a slick, fashionable and put-together look in their swimwear. A
friend accompanying us was so self concious about his old swim trunks
that he immediately purchased a new pair in the gift shop. And boy, does
that red clay stay with you. It definitely will stain natural fabrics,
and has a way of creeping in places. You will find residue of it coming
off of you and anything you are wearing or carrying for days. But it
would seem incomplete to skip the red clay. The idea is, you dip into
one of the small mineral baths to open your pores. They are sulfur
mineral spring baths, grouped with several small tubs for two on either
side of a larger one for 8 to 10. They are probably about 105 degrees,
the tubs lined with large stone tiles. Once you get used to the smell,
they are divine. Then you bring your opened pores to a wading area with
a big pile of red clay in the center. You approach this huge mud pie
with the attitude of a child. You just smear handfuls of the stuff all
over your body. Then you retire to a lounging area where you allow the
sun to make a human adobe brick out of you. There is another mud pie
nearby with a mister above it, to slightly moisten your mud should you
feel the need for a longer cure. Then you walk up to open showers,
equipped with scrub brushes to help you in your attempts to escape your
cocoon. You will need them. Only then are you encouraged to enjoy the
rest of the spa.
There are two pools toward the back of the grounds that are a sort of a
jacuzzi idea with one alteration. They are only about 6 to 8 inches
deep, the idea being that you lay out flat and *almost* float on the hot
bubbles. If your skin isn't overstimulated by this time, you can go swim
some laps in the ordinary chlorine pool, the large chlorine jacuzzi, or
go inside the salon. There, for $45 to $75 dollars, they will massage
any or all of your body, wrap you up in, or scrub you down with, all
manner of things harvested from the sea or orchard. One man I met there
talked about their pedicures as though they were his initiation into the
world of sensual delights. Once you are tingling with overstimulation,
you can proceed to another large pool filled with only about a foot of
water. They provide foam mats, and you just lay out and float, relaxing
on the water. Very comfy and soothing.
The food and drink at the snack bars is nothing to crow about, but they
passed up the opportunity to gouge their captive audience. If you wish
to bring your own food, there are picnic tables outside the spa, but I
doubt the experience would be enhanced by a full stomach.
On a Thursday afternoon, the ratio of women to men was something like 10
to 1, and the males in my party were in heaven. It was sort of a
happening place for upscale, beautiful young people, with a smattering
of older locals taking advantage of the senior rates offered.
They close at 6 p.m., by which time we were satiated, soaked through,
and rubberized. Despite the overall contrivancy of the place, we came
away delighted with the value of our experience.
Melanie
Club mud is a fun afternoon.
We did a package with a local hotel then hit the mud. Expect lots of kids and lots of people if the weather is nice. Expect ballpark or disneyland food prices. thats entertainment. Think of it as an afternoon at the beach only you get to squish red mud all over the folks you came with.
was it fun. yes, it was!
t
I'd heard a lot about Glen Ivy over the years and being a 'Hot-Springer', I naturally and quickly said YES when asked by a friend from Lake Elsinore if I wanted to go ... I was disappointed that the place was SO crowded and that there were so Few tubs for the actual Hot Mineral Water I had come for...it was virtually non-stop rotation of bodies in and out of the water with people lined up to get in the water. There was plenty to 'See' and there is a very obvious "O.C." crowd and influence over people and the place. LOTS of Concrete too! I had NO Idea the price my friend paid for admittance, but had I known, I certainly wouldn't have gone. Too much money, too large a crowd. Not enough tubs for the size of the crowd. I've been to BLM land with better Tubs! Go walk the Beach if you just want to 'See and Be Seen' while scantily clad IMHO.
FIRE WATCH NOV 15 08. MAP: http://tinyurl.com/5nzxen
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