Hot Springs AR

10/22 & 23/2018

We started our day driving through the Hot Springs National Park and stopped at some scenic spots, I bet it’s really pretty in the fall when the leaves change.

The tower was pretty cool, it cost to go up it, but it has an elevator, no climbing stairs and it’s well above the tree line, you can see for miles in all directions. The top deck is open and offers a walk around view and the second floor has a history of the area.

Then we walked along the nicely bricked promenade walkway, the back side of the bathhouses, and came back along bathhouse row, WOW!!! The people that could afford to go there were treated like royalty. OPULENT is the best word I can come up with to describe them, each bathhouse trying to out do the other.

Of course a few of the other treatments they offered looked like something out of a Frankenstein movie or some Middle Ages torture chamber.

In the beginning the area was full of open hot springs, now they are all covered, just steel access plates showing above ground. The the entire promenade area, I think, is all fill dirt covering the many pipes leading to the bath houses. The second floor of the tower has lots of info about the changes in the area.

Over all it was a good time and the weather was GREAT, just a little to early for the fall leaves. it’s well worth coming to the area, but I would recommend watching the fall color forecast and come at the height of the fall colors.

While we usually don’t like tourist trap areas, Hot Springs had a different feel to it and we ended up walking around 3 miles each of the 2 days we were there.

Well, don’t buy that again, actually it was free. They have several water jug filling statins around downtown, Free Mountain Spring Water. We filled up an empty jug, I’m not overly impressed with the taste. Some people must really like it because we saw several SUV’s with the back ends full of jugs either filled or ready to fill.

One other thing of note and we’re not sure what’s up but they sure like their sirens here. We’re about 2 miles from the edge of town and we have heard sirens several times each day.