Valuable Resource

I was in a bookstore at the Cross Creek Mall just killing time wandering the stacks when I came across a book that pretty much changed the course of my outdoor nude recreation experiences: Lee Baxandall's World Guide to Nude Beaches and Recreation Areas. For those unfamiliar, it listed, state by state, US territories and appropriate areas around the world all places that were established as safe for nude recreation. I was fascinated by this book for a number of reasons, but I would have to say that the #1 reason was that what I had been doing up to that point in my life actually had a name to it (Nude Recreation), but also that others loved getting naked in the outdoors, and that there were enough to not only have a place that was safe to go to, but that there were enough places that someone wrote a book about it! One of those places was Deep Creek Hot Springs outside of Hesperia in Southern California. I went on leave for 30 days to visit relatives in Dallas, then flew on to SoCal to spend time with my best friend and his family. While I was there, he let me borrow his truck, and following the directions in Lee's book, I went to Deep Creek (VIA the PCT, not from Bowen Ranch), and I was not only able to get nude and spend time in the few hot pools, but there were about 15 others there, both men and women. It was an awesome experience and I had finally dipped my toe into the world of social nude recreation. That was not the only place I found through Lee's book. There was the abandoned rock quarry in Northern Virginia that was a short drive off of my route to go to Cincinnati on 4 day weekends from Bragg (comment more on that later), and the abandoned strip mines near Ironton, Ohio that were very nice. On these 4 day weekends from Bragg, I would stop at both of these places to take a nice refreshing naked dip before driving the remainder of my trip, and I will always relish the memory of those hidden jewels of nude recreation.