We visited Hot Springs on a Sunday, consequently the town seemed very quiet and many places of interest were closed. John and I did walk along bathhouse row, which encompasses nine buildings that once were places to "take the waters", meaning to bathe in the thermal springs piped in from the hillsides surrounding the town. Pictured below is the only bathhouse left which has baths and spas for public use. One of the buildings is now the Fordyce Bathhouse Museum, the others are restaurants and art galleries.
The Buckstaff, as well as the other 8 historic bathhouses, are now part of the Hot Springs National Park. An interpretive sign located in this area notes that the National Park Service "preserves Bathhouse Row as a significant national landmark in the culture of leisure". The bathhouses were built around the 1920s. Yes, it does not seem like much of a national park in the way of any real big pristine beauty, yet besides the thermal springs there are mountain views, interesting geology, forested hikes and many creeks in the middle of town.
At one of the springs we saw a man sitting on a park bench, covering his head and feet with towels soaked in the thermal waters. At another spring faucets are available for filling up jugs of the water. A local man informed me that he regularly comes back to fill up his empty milk bottles because the water makes very good coffee. We did happen to have an empty bottle in our car to fill up, which we did and brought back home with us. It did not seem to improve my hot tea, but I happily drank it thinking that perhaps it did have some good health benefits!
Pictured above is the Arlington Hotel, built in 1924. Over the years sports figures as Babe Ruth and Joe Dimaggio, actress Marilyn Monroe and 4 presidents have resided here- that is to name only a few of the many celebrities. In this place the thermal waters are piped into the tubs and spas. We stayed at this hotel about 20 years ago (on New Years eve) and I have a wonderful memory of being in the hotel's outside pool at midnight. The water was warm, and we had a great view of the lights of the town.
After leaving bathhouse row we continued to walk through the town. It did not have the nice limestone walls as Eureka Springs, but rugged rock walls surrounding parts of the town. I was very much intrigued by the building pictured above, which seemed to be at least 100 years old and balanced precariously on a rock!
Maybe if I could have seen the building closer at the top my impression of it would be different.
We took two days driving home following a route mentioned in a book titled The Most Scenic Drives in America (published by Reader's Digest). It has been on John's bucket list and called the Talimena Scenic Byway. The drive traverses through the Oachita National Forest of western Arkansas. We were supposed to see "thick forests.., steep-sided mountains and compact valleys". Also an "abundance of lovely scenery and varied attractions". We saw absolutely nothing, and when there was a break in the clouds I took the above picture. We had left Hot Springs in a heavy rain storm, and this scenic byway was socked in with fog. We very quickly turned off it and took another road into Oklahoma. Slowly then the rain let up and we had a wonderful drive through eastern Oklahoma. We found here forests of oak and hickory as well as green rolling hills of pastureland. A lot of that land is on Native American reservations. We passed by The Cherokee National Heritage Center, another day we want to visit that. We also drove by Tahlequah where marchers of the Trail of Tears ended their journey. Our route home also took us along a meandering channel of the Illinois River. There is much to explore in eastern Oklahoma, but time did not permit that. It remains a trip for us on another day!
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