“The breakfast room has a laminated sign that reads 'Please Do Not Feed the Squirrels' and you can see exactly which window they mean.”

The sulfur hits you before the town does. You roll into Glenwood Springs on I-70 with the windows cracked because the canyon air felt too good to seal out, and then somewhere past the exit ramp the mineral smell finds you — eggy, warm, not unpleasant once you stop fighting it. Sixth Street runs parallel to the river, a block south of Grand Avenue, and the motels here sit in a low row like they've been watching the Roaring Fork merge with the Colorado since Eisenhower was president. Most of them have. The Silver Spruce is the one with the blue trim and a parking lot that's never quite full, never quite empty. I pull in around four in the afternoon. A hummingbird is working the flower box by the office door with the intensity of someone on a deadline.

Check-in takes about ninety seconds. The woman at the desk hands me a key card and a small printed sheet with breakfast hours and the WiFi password, which is taped to the back of the TV remote in the room anyway. She mentions the hot springs pool is a seven-minute walk. She's right — I time it later, though I take the scenic route along the river trail and it stretches to twelve.

A Room That Knows What It Is

The Silver Spruce doesn't pretend to be anything other than a motel. This is not a criticism. The room is clean, the bed is firm without being punishing, and the heater clicks on with the authority of machinery that has been doing its job since before you were born. Two double beds, a desk that works as a luggage rack, a bathroom with decent water pressure and towels that are white and smell like actual laundry detergent rather than some boutique fragrance. The walls are thin enough that you can hear your neighbor's TV if they're watching something loud, but Glenwood Springs is a town that goes to bed early, and by ten o'clock the whole building is quiet except for the occasional car on Sixth.

What the place gets right is the complimentary breakfast, which sounds like a throwaway amenity until you're standing in the little dining area at seven in the morning with a paper plate of scrambled eggs, a waffle you pressed yourself on one of those flip irons, and coffee that's surprisingly not terrible. There's juice, there's cereal, there's a toaster that requires patience. A man in hiking boots is eating a banana and studying a trail map spread across two tables. Nobody's in a rush. The squirrel sign, it turns out, refers to a bold gray squirrel that appears at the window nearest the waffle station like clockwork. Guests have clearly been losing this battle for years.

The location is the real argument. You're a short walk from Glenwood Hot Springs Pool — the big public one, not the fancy Iron Mountain version up the hill — and the vapor caves at Yampah Spa are about the same distance in the other direction. Grand Avenue, the main drag, is one block north and has everything you need: Daily Bread Café for a proper sit-down breakfast if the motel spread doesn't cut it, a liquor store, a couple of outfitters, and the Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park gondola base. The Amtrak station is close enough that you can hear the California Zephyr's horn when it rolls through, which it does twice a day, once heading west in the afternoon and once east in the evening, and both times it sounds like a movie.

“Glenwood Springs is a town that runs on geothermal heat and the quiet confidence of a place people have been coming to feel better since the Ute knew these waters.”

The WiFi works fine for checking email and loading maps but don't plan on streaming anything heavy — it stutters around peak hours when, presumably, every guest in the building is doing the same thing. The parking lot is free and uncomplicated, which matters more than it should after driving mountain passes all day. There's an ice machine by the stairs. I mention this because after a long soak in the hot springs, you come back to the room radiating heat like a space heater, and a cup of ice water from that machine is the most luxurious thing in the world. I sat on the edge of the bed drinking ice water and watching the last light turn the cliffs above town pink and felt like I'd figured something out, though I couldn't tell you what.

One thing worth noting: the motel sits right on Sixth Street, which carries some traffic noise during the day but quiets down considerably at night. If you're a light sleeper, ask for a room toward the back. If you're the kind of person who finds the sound of occasional cars comforting — the way some people like rain on a roof — it won't bother you at all.

Walking Out Into Morning Steam

In the morning the river trail has steam lifting off it where the hot springs runoff meets the cold air. A woman is walking two dogs who are both wearing bandanas, which feels correct for Glenwood Springs. The town smells different at seven than it did at four — less sulfur, more pine, like the mountains reassert themselves overnight. The Zephyr horn sounds from somewhere east, heading toward the canyon. I realize I never once thought about the room after I left it, which is exactly what a good motel should let you do.

Rooms at the Silver Spruce start around 90 USD a night depending on the season, breakfast included. For what that buys you — a clean bed seven minutes from the hot springs, free parking, waffle iron, and a squirrel who believes in persistence — it's hard to argue with the math.