Austin Hotel & Convention Center Hot Springs

... avoiding the concrete jungles that are interstates. Some of the roads we've taken provide us with miles of roads and scenery before crossing paths with another car or house/town/etc. These are generally one or two lane highways but Lola is getting us along just fine with no sweat.

On the Road: Floating docks with paddleboats; smokehouses; homemade looking stone houses; cabins; crystal mines; long one floor motels; rolling hills (and then a neighborhood called Rolling Hills ...

... us it was just a quick visit to this beautiful area, it sometimes feels like their just isn't enough time (Bek always feels like there always isn't enough time when it comes to hot springs), and we had a fabulously relaxing time. Next we are heading to Tennessee and the home of the king.

We hope you are all well, and for those Aussies, enjoying the oncoming heat. Thinking of you all, the steamy, Bek and Jesse Train.

... and as of this moment still am not hungry.
At Crater of Diamonds State Park, we picked up a geocache actually put out by the state parks of Arkansas. That in itself is neat as most state parks will not allow geocaches. While getting this cache we ran into another family of cachers looking for the cache, they came while we were signing the log. We then headed to the mine field and mom bought trowels for digging in the field. As we walked ...

... around the house and grounds to explain things. We decided to get the platinum tour since it included the cars and planes as well as Graceland and some other exhibits. As we toured the grounds I started feeling slightly transported to the 60's. Very much 60's decor which was how it was when he lived there, it just made things seem different. He had a very elaborate house for the time period, however, today I am sure the TV and other things that made Graceland ...

... It was amazing!! The attendants were experts at ushering us around just right so we felt guided, cared for and immeasurably pampered.

We walked on down the street and strolled into Rolando's Restaurant-- Brazilian and fabulous! Even took a few pix of our lunch it was so well presented! Home to our campsite for some old movies and a quiet night.

The weather took a turn for the better ...

Luke and Jenna had decided to take a very scenic route back to Searcy and go along the sort of back roads highways, visiting small Arkansas towns or towns with cool downtown districts along the way, and one of those was Hot Springs, where my family happened to be due to the long Labor Day weekend. I decided to surprise them by just walking into the lake house completely ...

... Yeah right.

Both my aunt's live in cute little houses in cute little neighborhoods. They have family pictures lining the walls and both even had my graduation picture from high school. My sister, mom, and I looked through family photo albums and found pictures of my grandmother when she was younger. It's crazy to think of my grandmother as a little kid.

Last night we went to dinner at their friends house. Turns out their town is dry on Sundays but her friends greeted us ...

... weights, the apparatus had a cable that ran through a series of pulleys. You could increase the strain by tightening the pulley). Other exercises included the parallel bars, pummel horse, hanging rings, rope ladders, climbing rack, trapeze, tossing a medicine ball, punching bags and, something called "Indian Clubs with Striking Dummy". · Grand Promenade Corridor - A long & wide walkway along "Bathhouse Row" that is lined with fountains, flowers, shrubs and trees ...

It was with some reluctance that we left Texas, we have spent longer in this state than any other to date, but it will be the parks that we remember particularly and as we drove out of Atlanta State park on a grey misty morning the farewell said it all. We are heading for Memphis, so we chose an arbitrary overnight campsite about half way to our destination. Crossing ...

... a couple of hours. But I was able to be on the Internet for a decent amount of the time I was 'killing' due to the lack of sleeping. I started pretty early, around 9am local time, 10am Eastern. I got packed up (which took about 15 minutes) and was on my way. I didn't have nearly as much distance to cover to get to my next intended stop, since I had covered so much ground the first couple of days. I did however ...