Anyone who aspires to the scenic, steaming waters of Goldmyer Hot Springs must enter a monthly lottery. This involves watching a short video filled with footage of stranded or overturned cars, a scared-straight tale of what happens when people undertake this journey without necessary precautions. The reading comprehension quiz that follows resembles a CAPTCHA, aimed at reckless dumbasses rather than spambots.

Goldmyer sounded like a grand adventure to share with my son after a family Yellowstone trip piqued his interest in hot springs. The Northwest is dotted with these geothermic getaways, but Silas wanted an experience more authentic than a swimming pool that happens to be parked over a font of hot water.

Two months later, I found myself, credit card in hand, on the phone with an upbeat Goldmyer staffer to secure our lottery-won spots. But the scrutiny wasn’t over yet.

I asserted that yes, I stood ready to use an axe or saw—or my own physical strength—to clear any fallen branches that might block the unpaved US Forest Service road I’d be driving. No need to point out that I didn’t actually own any of those items; if I encountered such obstacles, I’d be at the mercy of my middle-aged arm muscles and assistance from a 10-year-old boy.

“And will you be arriving in a high-clearance vehicle?” was her next question. My Mazda CX-5 nearly derailed our entire quest for mediative mother-son soaking bliss, since it fell a half-inch shy of Goldmyer’s clearance requirements. “Actually, if your Mazda is older than 2017, the clearance is eight and a half inches.” Saved by our old car! But for a journey seeking togetherness and tranquility, the specificity of this process made me awfully nervous.

So did her response when I asked if people usually hike in their swimsuits or change onsite. After a long pause, she reminded me that Goldmyer is swimsuit optional. But surely some people opt in on the swimsuits? Especially people visiting with kids? Forget trampoline parks or Great Wolf Lodge: This family outing could be rife with ambient nudity and vehicular peril.

As all this talk of marooned cars and BYO chainsaws might suggest, this geothermic marvel 25 miles outside North Bend is one of the region’s most impressive—and elusive—natural retreats. A nonprofit owns the land and protects the health of the naturally heated water that flows out of an old mineshaft. Goldmyer accepts just 20 people a day (hence the lottery). But the journey to get here weeds out all but the most serious of recreants: six miles on that rutted, stone-strewn butt-bender of a road, followed by a hike nearly five miles long. (Could be worse. Until the government built a bridge in 2007, you’d also need to ford the Middle Fork River.)

I’m not a particularly outdoorsy person—did my lack of an axe give it away? And 10 miles on foot is no joke for a 10-year-old. But Silas was game for the adventure; I was eager for an experience that didn’t involve screens. We packed plenty of snacks and conducted real talk about keeping our eyes to ourselves.

“I’m nervous,” Silas confessed that morning. I admitted that I was, too. But our trip was tranquil until that final unpaved road, somehow both tedious and grueling. Six miles took us 80 minutes. The hike from Dingford Creek Trailhead was gentle, fueled by a few breaks and a lot of sour jelly beans. We’d left a city in the throes of summer; up in the Cascades the perpetually cold air and shroud of mist returned us to winter. After a final, huffing push up some mountainside stairs, we arrived on a scene straight from a German fairy tale.

The changing facilities consist of an open-sided pavilion from the Berenstain Bears school of tree-bough architecture. Silas and I held up towels for one another to create a makeshift changing room, but anybody else who happened up the path at that moment would have been treated to some surprise full-frontal mom nudity, on an elevated platform that might as well be a lighted stage.

A low stone wall keeps the old mineshaft filled with 125-degree water—heat so strong it pushes on your chest like a weight. A few deep breaths, though, and your body rises to the occasion while your brain floats off and does its own thing. Few words are more enticing to a kid than “old mineshaft,” so we ventured deeper into the cave to experience all of this, plus pitch blackness.

Steaming water spills into two more soaking pools, the heat becoming slightly gentler along the way. A cold plunge pool offers a moment of frigid contrast. Our handful of fellow bathers all wore suits. Much respect to anybody who soaks sans clothes, but hoisting yourself over the slippery stones that surround the water does involve a lot of squatting and crab-walking close to strangers’ faces.

The bathtub-size pool tucked just beneath the mineshaft is angled so two people can sit side by side and gaze at the mist-clad mountainside before us. Silas positioned his little shoulder blades beneath the water splashing down from above. We were warm, the air around us was brisk, and Burnboot Creek Falls on the other side of the trees provided a rushing soundtrack. We took it all in—a Northwest kid and his picked-last-for-sports mom, having a rugged adventure where the risk factors were real, but the reward was a genuine connection with nature and with each other. We marveled. We traded silly jokes. Then my son uttered the five words every parent prays to hear after pushing your kid outside his comfort zone. “This was so worth it.”