Esalen Institute

The public bathing window at Esalen is 1am to 3am, which means you drive Highway 1 in the dark, arrive at a famous counterculture institute on a cliff above the Pacific, and lower yourself into a natural sulfur hot spring with the ocean sixty feet below you. No phones allowed, nudity standard, strangers become briefly intimate. The baths themselves are modest — stone tubs, running mineral water, no amenities — but the location and the hour make them one of the most irreplaceable bathing experiences on the continent. Book weeks ahead. It fills completely.