. . . Where Nobody Knows Your Name

Next time you can’t figure out what to do on a Saturday night, consider taking a vacation. Relaxation, distance from the day-to-day cares and worries, adventure, revelry and a couple of photo opportunities. If that’s a fair description of a vacation, it’s also what an evening at Wheeler Hot Springs in Ojai amounts to.

A hot tub, half-hour massage, and dinner for two with live jazz is the package tour, or you can choose to head up earlier, ordering facials, mud wraps, and other forms of pampering a la carte. You can be home by midnight, or if you want to be decadent and irresponsible and stay gone for a full 24 hours, you can spend the night at the Ojai Valley Inn just down the road.

Wheeler is not far from Los Angeles, physically speaking, though in spirit it borders miraculously on the old “you can’t get there from here” school. A small cabin up a leafy stony path serves as the salon. The rooms housing hot and cold tubs of spring water for soaking smell of sulfur and the outdoors, their rough-hewn walls draped with ferns. The lodge, where dining and entertainment takes place around a massive stone fireplace, next to the 100-year-old bar, is unassuming and rustic.

Bleary Angelenos on the lam might think they’ve stumbled onto a set for “Northern Exposure.” But let them be warned--this is a schmooze-free environment.

Something in the spring water seeks to kill off pretension, and even the celebrities who frequent the evenings of top-drawer jazz, blues and cuisine are indistinguishable in their jeans and flannels from the local contractors, New Agers, and schoolteachers who also flock to Wheeler, as well as the strong contingencies from Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. Local fans include Ricky Lee Jones, Larry Hagman, Bill Paxton, Mary Steenburgen, Malcolm McDowell and Tim Burton.

Owner Tom Marshall is a magnanimous, gentlemanly host who speaks with a wry self-deprecation when he isn’t praising his employees, such as French Chef Gael Lecolley.

“After years of being a quiet little place that no one talked about, in the three years of Gael being here, we’ve completely redefined this place,” says Marshall.

The food, loosely described as modern European, is not the usual frantically inventive spa cuisine. It’s possible to dine in stately ecstasy on lobster and venison, as well as to entertain a more modest risotto or charred tuna salad.

The first thing Marshall steers newcomers toward is the art, for this is as much a gallery as it is a nightspot. In March and much of April, the paintings and sculpture on display are by two Bulgarian artists, Stavri Kalinov and Tsveti Kirov. The pianist on a recent Friday night was also Bulgarian, Milcho Leviev.

The entertainment usually begins early, around 6 or 7 p.m., in consideration of those who might be facing a long drive home. Even if you stay the night in town, the early hour is welcome if you’ve just been soaked and massaged into a blissfully comatose state.

“Manhattan Transfer was here once, and we had to hire a sardine-packing machine to squeeze everyone in,” says Marshall. He lists other past performers, including Joe Pass, Joe Henderson, Kenny Burrell and Ray Brown. But of one famous rock star, he says, “I wouldn’t have him here if he paid us a thousand dollars. He’s a bad person.”

Poor Famous Rock Star. An invitation to Wheeler is reason enough to be very, very good.

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Where: Wheeler Hot Springs, 16825 Maricopa Highway, Ojai; (800) 9-WHEELER.

When: Weekend spa hours: 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Restaurant 5 to 9:30 p.m.

Cost: Spa package: half day (includes hot tub, facial, body wrap and dinner) is $135 per person. Special package: Hot tub and dinner for two, $72. Hot tub, half-hour massage and dinner for two, $139. Dinner entrees $14-$23. Wine by the bottle $14 and up.