Day 163 Memphis Tennessee - Hot Springs Arkansas
Trip Start
May 07, 2008
1
173
205
Trip End
Nov 22, 2008
Hot Springs,
Arkansas,
United States
Thursday, October 16, 2008
The rain had settled in for the night and continued to fall as we packed and moved, making it a little damp as we unhooked our umbilical cords and filled with propane.
We set off with the first destination being set as Little Rock Arkansas, for no particular reason, except it is west, the general direction we wanted to go.
We stopped over the border at the information centre to obtain the road map for the state and obtained a few brochures.
The road should really be called the 18 wheeler highway, even with the rain falling out of the sky very heavily, the 18 wheelers simply driving at full pace blowing water and spray as they maintained their pace. Certainly we prefer to drop our speed to handle the conditions.
We arrived in time for lunch in North Little Rock, lunched in a car park. Amongst the brochures we picked up at the information centre, was one with a great picture of an old mill, so we set Mandy to take us to that site.
It was an interesting drive through the suburbs of North Little Rock, to find this Water wheel mill, been built as a replica to preserve a sense of the history.
It was in a beautiful setting with ponds and ducks with gardens that were flowering with autumn flowers as well as some trees showing colour. Very picturesque and well worth absorbing, and on a lake below the ponds were a couple of fishermen fishing for catfish, just to complete the picture. Not hard to visualise the spring flowers dressing it up completly.
Okay where to now, well South of Little Rock is a town called Hot Springs, set up as a national park as one of the first in the country, to preserve the natural hot water springs of the region for all Americans.
The weather had cleared and the road through was a lot better and easy to handle. We arrived to one of the advertised RV parks, Called Cloud Nine: it is off the road up on the side of a good size hill, clear air for sure!
We set up and had the all important cuppa, before heading the last 11 miles into the town.
The town is quite a nice small town and the main street is lined with still used old Bath houses, turned to spas or resorts.
We found a park in the information centre, (a place marked for buses) it wasn't crowded so we figured we should be ok. We walked along the street checking out the bathhouses and found one open and headed in with our towels and swimmers.
How great to spend a couple of hours relaxed in natural hot springs in tiled spa baths. Four pools with the temperatures ranging from 95 up to 104 degrees Fahrenheit. After the hot tubs and showers supplied with shower gel, Shampoo and conditioner, we all came out relaxed and squeaky clean!
Head home and take a path through a narrow winding road through the National Park, very pretty with the soft trees, at times over hanging the road to create a tunnel.
Home and relax have dinner and at last be able to post the last couple of days happenings.
Tomorrow unsure of our movements, we have plenty of time, and around here with the hot pools as well as a gem field where it is possible to go find diamonds in a public place where it is "finders Keepers" (over 1000 diamonds found in 2007) as well as other Gemstones in the area, no decision has been made, also the Castle is due for a service/oil change.
We are heading through Oklahoma and then up into Kansas at this stage. We spoke with Owen and Bev tonight, and they ran into Snow in New Mexico. NOT GOOD! Never mind we will not concern ourselves, it is not here nor NOW
