Ask An Expert: Top 5 Spa Resets I Took in 2025
From highbrow to lowbrow, how we're resetting in 2026 – in the Southwest, SoCal and Upstate NY
This winter we’re starting a new rhythm in Escape Club: every other week, we ask someone with real experience or insight to share a quick “Top 5” from their world — design, hospitality, food, nature, and the quieter corners of culture that shape how we travel. It’s a chance to hear directly from people who actually live and breathe these places, and a small bonus for our paid subscribers.
We kicked off the series with Casey Scieszka — writer, innkeeper, and co-owner of Spruceton Inn — who shared her Top 5 motels across the U.S., drawing from years spent restoring, running, and reimagining one herself. In the second, Tom Roberts of Homestedt and North Branch Cider Mill shared his Top 5 Most Charming Shops in the U.S..
For our third installment — and a timely one — we’re focusing on resets. Spa resets, specifically. And since this is something I’ve been doing semi-professionally for years, I’ll be taking this one.
Ask a Travel Professional: Erin Lindsey, Creative Director and Founder of Escape Brooklyn, Sharing My Top 5 Spa Resets of 2025
2025 was a true reset year for me. When I started Escape nearly 15 years ago, our unofficial motto was “hike off your hangover.” Back then, recovery meant escaping the city for fresh air, and a hike followed by an outdoor beer or five.
At 41, the idea of a reset looks totally different. These days, it’s less about undoing excess (I can’t remember my last hangover, truly) and much more about slowing down. Ideally through movement, quiet, and time in nature.
Working remotely allows me to spend much of the year on the road, splitting time between New York and elsewhere. After years of doing very little personal travel, I made a resolution in 2025 to change that. The goal was to reconnect with the type of travel that fills my cup, which means desert roadtrips, getting up to watch sunrise, hot springs, hiking and great food.
While putting this list together, I realized each place offered more than a good spa. Every one was set in a beautiful landscape with open views, and space to hide away with a book between soaks. My favorite had hiking paths that led to the remains of a prehistoric pueblo site, which pretty much sums up the kind of reset I respond to now.
For me, a reset isn’t about a single treatment or main event (although those absolutely do not hurt.) It’s about being somewhere quiet and remote, where the sense of calm comes as much from the setting as from the spa. Here’s my criteria list:
A mix of budgets and aesthetics, from highbrow to lowbrow;
Day passes where possible;
Mostly outdoor setting, with bonus points for access to hiking or outdoor wandering;
Settings where the outdoor environment leads the experience. (Did I mention I love being outside?)
If this resonates with you, you’re in the right place. Below are my Top 5 Spa Resets of 2025, an exclusive for our paid members. Thanks for being paid supporters of Escape Club — we couldn’t run this small business without you!
If any of these make it onto your 2026 list, I’d love to hear about it. Hit reply if you have any questions or need any local recommendations!
— Erin