Hot Springs National Historical Park (September 3, 2000)

Our fourth park trip came when we headed east to Hot Springs National Park for the Labor Day weekend. Being only Labor Day weekend in the Southwest, it was still INCREDIBLY hot, which makes the idea of going to a place actually CALLED Hot Springs a little stupid. But, hey, we were going for the closest stamps, not the smartest! Hot Springs is an entire town with stuff all over to look at, but here's the sign first:







Here's a great shot of Kevin standing by this...uh...this hole in the ground. This hole was famous for its, uh...holey-ness and because, uh....it's been there a long time, this hole.
In Hot Springs.
Um...there was hot water in it, too.
Did I mention it was in Hot Springs...?
Okay, this officially qualifies as the stupid pic of the trip!

The bath houses were the big draw of Hot Springs (and still are).

Back when good health was the craze in the 1800's, people flocked here for the "healing" aspects of the hot springs (yes, there's actually a hot spring under the city, in case I hadn't already mentioned it!).

These places were the resorts of their day, as you can tell by the photos .

Ooo, ooo, ooo…did I mention they had big SHINY THINGS???? One of the other draws of the Hot Springs area are the “diamonds”, which are really just hunks of quartz with points at both ends like a diamond. They also had table upon table full of the blue shiny glass that I love…apparently the world’s biggest Coke bottle had shattered nearby…!

My favorite pic, however, is right from the hotel room. I love how the town is just snugly nestled into the Ouachita Mountains! If not for the inherent danger most of the rural parts of the Appalachians has for me, we'd probably be living in a log cabin snuggled into a mountainside with a ton of trees ourselves (of course, 2 outta 3 ain't bad...got the trees and the cabin now)!

The nice thing about Arkansas is that it's not that big a deal to drive it, so we were able to make two parks in one on this trip: Hot Springs and Central High School.