The Garden of Eden State

Generally speaking, spas seem to exist for two classes – the glossy-magazine journalists sent to cover them, and the very rich. But it turns out that in New Jersey there’s another type of spa altogether: one that caters to those of us who could really use a weekend out of the city lounging around a favorite aunt’s suburban ranch house, but aren’t blessed with such an aunt.At last count there were 48 spas in New Jersey, which is a lot for a state that isn’t California – as well as difficult to believe when coming off the George Washington Bridge. There, New Jersey appears exactly as it does in your imagination: Staples, Fudruckers, the Grand Chalet Elegant Banquet Hall stretching along the freeway with all the grandeur of a parking lot. But minutes later the road turns, the strip malls give way to trees, the country opens up into waves of low hills, and you think, “So this is the New Jersey people talk about when they say New Jersey is beautiful.”You might even dare to hope that the Minerals Resort & Spa at Crystal Springs, in Hamburg, N.J., only a little over an hour from New York, will itself confound expectations and morph into a rustic Eden suited to its neighboring farmlands. That it emerges on the horizon looking instead more like that mythical aunt’s suburban ranch house, only much larger, shouldn’t come as a disappointment, however. The resort’s comfortably bland anonymity is precisely its appeal – that and the promise of a complimentary spa treatment for two, which had lured my boyfriend and me there in the first place.After checking in at the Minerals Hotel (room rates $149-$215 a person), we took note of our resort compatriots – was that a wedding party, or a cluster of Eastern Frosted Food Association convention members? – and headed to our room. En route, we passed through a soaring atrium housing an indoor-outdoor pool multiplex complete with whirpools, waterfalls, steam room, sauna, and a lifeguard perched on a stand. My boyfriend ogled the basketball gymnasium. Also on the premises, we’d been told, were a fully equipped fitness center and indoor tennis and racquetball courts. Unpacking our bags in a tastefully faux-rustic suite the size of my studio apartment, warming our hands before the faux fire in the faux fireplace, and flipping through the TV’s innumerable channels, it began to seem very possible to pass the next 48 hours never once stepping outside and not even notice. But first, there was our spa appointment.Upon entering the dim, aromatic cavern that is the Elements Spa, forever staying indoors seemed an even better prospect. The pipe music was a bit much, but very soothing. Miraculously, beaded curtains were used to good effect. “This place is part mausoleum, part Mayan temple, part New York Eye and Ear Infirmary,” my boyfriend mumbled. But before he could sneak off to the basketball courts, we were bundled in plush white robes, plied with fruit-infused water, and ushered into the first of three interlocking chambers for our Elemental Journey.Elements Spa offers the traditional range of therapeutic ($80-$120) and beauty treatments ($25-$110), but its signature is the Elemental Journey spa treatment for two. For $375, couples can indulge in a four-part, hour-and-a-half relaxation extravaganza, starting with a side-by-side crystal salt scrub and culminating in champagne and chocolates. That the package is presumably tailored for couples like those we’d seen in the lobby – those with plans to exchange wedding vows that weekend at the 53,000-square-foot Crystal Springs Country Club – hadn’t escaped us.In Chamber One, we were directed to a pair of massage tables, each helmed with a masseuse, and instructed to disrobe and lie on our stomachs beneath towels. Candles flickered, pan flutes warbled; side by side we succumbed to an extraordinarily calming salt scrub. Somehow, I managed not to notice that throughout, a comely woman was rubbing salt all over my unclothed boyfriend.Too soon, it seemed, the masseuses pointed our salt-encrusted, Margarita-flavored selves toward a door, and disappeared. Silently – for all its heavy-handedness, our hushed, simulated paradise discouraged chatter, snide or otherwise – we entered a murky, womblike room lined in bamboo and sank into a half-moon tub of mineral water scattered with rose petals. Was such a premarital indulgence even legal, I wondered? Then the waterfalls came crashing down on our shoulders, blissfully obliterating all thoughts for the next half hour.It was in Chamber Three, the steam room, where we discovered an actual palette dotted with handfuls of mud, that the looks on our faces confirmed my hunch that the Elemental Journey is best suited to newlyweds. Or at the very least, to couples that have known each other long enough to not feel mildly embarrassed by the prospect of rubbing anti-oxidant, firming, and moisturizing muds all over one another as if in preparation for a tribal ceremony. But rub we did, and then sat on a long marble slab beneath a shower of gentle rain – a day in the life of Adam and Eve, and one step further along the rutted road toward intimacy.After our showers, skin preternaturally smooth and lightly fragrant, limbs loose as noodles, we soaked our feet in side-by-side aromatherapy footbaths and tried not to pass out. An attendant scattered a few more rose petals and said, “I’ll be right back with the champagne and chocolates.” My boyfriend looked at me and sighed, “That’s the nicest thing I’ve ever heard.”Minerals Resort & Spa at Crystal Springs, 105-137 Wheatsworth Road, Hamburg, N.J., 877-827-5996.Winter Packages At Minerals Resort & SpaMARTIN LUTHER KING DAYPackage includes deluxe Minerals Hotel accommodations, $50 voucher for Kites Restaurant or 8-hour Mountain Creek ski lift voucher, unlimited access to Minerals Sports Club, and full breakfast at Kites Restaurant. Rates start at $140 a person a night.ELEMENTS SPA ESCAPEPackage includes deluxe Minerals Hotel accommodations, a full-body therapeutic massage at Elements Spa, unlimited access to Minerals Sports Club, and full breakfast at Kites Restaurant. $162 midweek, $170 weekend.SKI MOUNTAIN CREEKPackage includes deluxe Minerals Hotel accommodations, 8-hour Mountain Creek ski lift voucher, unlimited access to the Minerals Sports Club, and full breakfast at Kites Restaurant; $111 midweek, $131 weekend.WINTER ROMANCEPackage includes luxury Minerals Hotel accommodations, bedside champagne and chocolates upon arrival, shared Tranquility Therapeutic Massage, wine-tasting dinner for two at Restaurant Latour, unlimited access to the Minerals Sports Club, and full breakfast at Kites Restaurant. $599 midweek, $635 weekend.

The Garden of Eden State

The Garden of Eden State

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