Hot Springs National Park

Hot Springs was yet another national park where we had absolutely no idea what to expect, which always makes for a nice treat. Until the Gateway Arch in St. Louis became a national park in February of 2018, Hot Springs was the smallest of the national parks. It has a long history and is the oldest "entity" in the system, having become a "Reservation" in 1832.  Part of becoming a reservation was the agreement that they would always offer free water to the public, so there are fountains all over offering fresh, warm spring water.

The national park is formed around a collection of upwellings of a natural hot spring. The water comes to the surface with an average temperature of 143º F. People have been coming to the hot springs for bathing and rituals for as long as there have been people in the area. The Dunbar-Hunter Expedition "discovered" the hot springs for the United states in 1804 while they were exploring the new Louisiana purchase. Almost immediately a small town popped up as people flocked in to bath in the springs for the health benefits.

Over time, the springs became more accessible with the introduction of trains and then roads and the community and the baths became more sophisticated. The wooden structures on bath house row were slowly replaced by fancy stone bath houses with all of the possible amenities, two of which are still open for baths.

The current visitor center is in the fanciest of the old baths, which has been turned into a museum. The baths were very ornate and had fancy stained glass, like this piece on the ceiling of the men's changing rooms:

They also included "state of the art medical interventions."

These cabinets were for alternating between a heated sauna sit, on the right,
and a cold ice block sit, on the left. You would sit down in the contraption
with your head sticking out the hole on the top. 

Patients would stand in the needle shower on the wall, while a technician
would shoot them with high pressure water streams in a form of hydromassage. 

There have a "needle bath" that shoot water at you from the side to rinse all of the sweat and minerals off after a soak. 

A "Site bath." A small tube to sit in while mercury was applied to cure your syphilis. 

In the upper levels there was a gym that included early physical therapy machines, large lounges for spending the afternoon, a beauty parlors for hair and nails, and rooms for massages. In the peak of the popularity of the baths, in the late 1800s, rich people would come from around the country to stay in hot springs taking baths prescribed to them by a doctor every day for an average of 21 days.

There are still a few bathhouses that you can bathe in. Every package includes a bath in the natural spring water and needle shower and many include a steam room and massages as well. These were all a bit out of our price point. We did consider it though, it being Valentine's Day.

After touring the museum we took a hike on some of the paths in the hilly area included in the park. There was a nice walk up to the top where there was a lookout tower, but we elected not to pay to go up the tower. The view was already nice.

All in all, there isn't much to "see" at this National Park, but the history is interesting.

It's Been Six Months!

Wow, its already been six months since we left Bellevue, and what a six months it has been!

In Review

We started out by heading north, driving through the heart of British Columbia, up the Cassiar Highway into the Yukon Territories. We did the whole circuit of paved roads in Alaska, from Fairbanks, to Anchorage, via Denali National Park. Next we headed down the Kenai Peninsula, and Kenai Fjords National Park, then over to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Valdez, before heading back out the Alcan Border. We took a short detour down into Skagway on our way back through the Yukon before returning down the Cassiar Highway. We stuck to the coast on the way down, taking a ferry from Prince Rupert down to Vancouver island, returning home for a short time before continuing on.

In Oregon, we attended a wedding and then quickly headed east to catch another wedding in Washington, D.C. two weeks later. We took almost the most direct route through Idaho, Wyoming, and Nebraska before reaching the geographic center of the lower 48 states in Kansas. We'll be returning to Idaho and Wyoming when touring the west, and are content with what we've seen of Nebraska and Kansas. From Kansas, we continued through Missouri, Indiana and Ohio before running into a bit of trouble in West Virginia. We did make it to our second wedding in Washington, D.C. and explored Virginia, Maryland and Delaware before heading north.

After Delaware, we quickly headed north to see what we could and then get back south before winter caught up to us. We stayed in a few national and state forests in Vermont and New Hampshire on the way to Acadia National Park in Maine. The journey south was more leisurely as we drove along the coasts of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. We went inland to see Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, before returning to the coast in North Carolina. 

Our first cold winter-y nights caught up to us in South Carolina of all places. We went inland once we hit Georgia and took a central route through Florida, where we spent Thanksgiving and thought we'd spend most of December. Our plans changed as we coordinated a family Christmas gathering in Austin, Texas. We explored the parks of southern Florida before rushing up the gulf coast, through Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana to make it to Texas for Christmas. 

After Christmas, we went back east, exploring Mississippi and Alabama before returning to Atlanta. From there, we flew to the Dominican Republic. Since returning from the D.R. we've wrapped up the last parks in the eastern states in Tennessee and Kentucky We are now in Memphis, TN finishing up a few blog posts before heading on, back to the west.

The numbers

We both love numbers, so here's a few that we've been keeping track of on our trip:

20,273 Miles Driven
1555 Gallons of fuel used
35 States visited (Plus D.C. and the Dominican Republic)
10 National Parks Visited (Not including Los Haitises)
5750 Dollars spent on RV repairs
4 Oil Changes
2 Blown tires
32 Walmart parking lots
8 Cracker Barrel parking lots
2 Cabela's parking lots
14 Sets of friends and family visited
7 Sets of friends and family staid with

What's Next

Probably the most surprising numbers above for a half way point is the 10 national parks visited. At the most recent count there are 62 national parks (White Sands in New Mexico was made a national park in December). This is mostly due to the distribution of parks in the United States. There are 24 parks in California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico, all states that we have not yet visited. Alaska also has a lot of national parks (eight) but we had to limit ourselves to the three that we could drive through. We'll visit the others on another trip. 

Our next park will be Hot Springs in Arkansas before make a trip through Oklahoma and Texas to reach Big Bend. From there, we may try to stay on this optimal route. However, since we need to save the northern parks for the summer, we might try to hit all of the southwest parks while we are down there, even if that's not "ideal" distance wise. Our route for the next few months will still have to take into account the weather.

We're also hoping to start doing posts that are less about specific things we are doing and more big picture. If you have any questions about our trip or our life style we would love to hear them. We'll probably do a question and answer blog, or if we get some longer questions, they might even get their own posts. Send us questions if you have them!