Entering southeastern Arkansas the scenery did not change much from across the river on the Mississippi delta area. Vast fields were still scattered around us, most of them flooded. It did seem however immediately more prosperous than most of the parts of Mississippi. We made our way crossing the state going towards the northwest to the town of Hot Springs. We passed through Pine Bluff before going through the outer suburbs of Little Rock then heading onto Hot Springs. We arrived at our campground just outside of Hot Springs at dusk, setting up camp, cooking dinner and getting set for a day in the town the next day.
We woke up the next day ready to go. The good weather gods had looked down upon us fondly gracing us with great weather as we set out. As Hot Springs isn’t big it only took us 10 minutes to reach the town and find parking. We had wanted to go to Hot Springs as it is one of the more unique towns and National Parks in the entire country. While we have been to many National Parks on this trip (15+), this by far took the cake for being the best urban park. Urban park you ask? Yes, while its true when you think of a National Park you think of Yellowstone, The Everglades, or any of the truly awe inspiring and huge national parks. This park was not one of those. The park was created because of simple hot water. As the story goes the hot springs in Hot Springs were discovered in the late 1500’s by Spanish Explorers. For the next 300 or so years people came to the springs setting up temporary cabins. It wasn’t until 1807 when the first permanent settlement was established. As the years went on and the town grew more and more people came to the springs to find out if the hot water and the mineral properties that it had could cure whatever ailed them. The territory of Arkansas in 1820 (it wasn’t a state yet) requested federal protection for the springs so that they were not destroyed by shady entrepreneurs of the day. In 1832 this was granted.
Starting in the mid 1800’s bathhouses started to pop up in the town harnessing the waters and inviting customers to come in and bathe. The heyday for this was the early 20th century where luxurious European style bathhouses were all the rage. As 8 of these, turn of the century buildings are still standing that was our first place to go. It was a bit strange standing in almost the center of the city with restaurants and tourist shops on one side of the street and these big elegant old bathhouses on the other. We found out that they are all owned by the park service with a few being leased out to other companies (1 as a bath house and another as a brewery). Another was being used as the park headquarters with yet another as the park gift shop.
As one of these was where the park headquarters was located we walked in and explored around a bit. The bathhouse was separated almost in half, men on one side and women on the other. After changing in the dressing room you would emerge and go to a room that looked like something straight out of roman times. In this room there were private bathtubs set up along the exterior where you would get in to bathe. After a 20-minute bath (the park service set the rules on this) you would enter the cooling room. From here you could either go to a resting area which could either be an outside veranda on the inside of the building or to a mens/womens only reading room. You also could go to a gym, massage room or any other sort of service of the day. It was pretty neat seeing this building as it was set up as it had looked in the 1930’s.
On either side of this street were large multi spout drinking fountains set up by the park service. Through the day we saw people pulling up in their cars and vans hauling out large office cooler style bottles and filling them up. We found out that this water came directly from the springs and after tasting it knew why people wanted to drink only this water.
The middle of the day was spent walking around town popping into a number of tourist shops seeing what they had to offer as well as going to an Ecuadorian restaurant for lunch. We then hiked up to Hot Springs Mountain Tower, which sits at the top of Hot Springs Mountain. The tower is 216 feet tall and had an excellent view of the area. From the tower we hiked back down to the town taking one last look at the bathhouses before walking back to Bubbles and driving back to the campground for the night.
The next day we woke up ready to go. Today we were headed for the capitol of Arkansas, the city of Little Rock. As Little Rock isn’t that far from Hot Springs we pulled into town in an hour or so. As it was a Saturday morning we drove downtown to Little Rock’s farmers market. While there wasn’t much to speak of in terms of produce there were a lot of great food stalls set up so we decided to have lunch (BBQ for me and Indian for Julie, both delicious)! Walking out of the market we noticed that we were right along the Arkansas River and there were a lot of bicyclists riding by. We walked back to Bubbles, grabbed our bikes and we were off. We rode back to the river then along it stopping at an amphitheater to listen to a choir practice for Easter Sunday the next day. We then rode across the river to the other side of town checking out a WW2 submarine docked. This was unexpected and very cool to see.
From the submarine we rode back across the river, passed the Bill Clinton Presidential Library to Heifer International. We were told to check out Heifer International by an owner of a bike shop that we stopped at. Heifer is a non-profit that is working to eradicate hunger and poverty. As the name implies they do this by cows (along with a number of other animals). They started in the mid 1940’s by a veteran coming home from war. This is basically how they work. They train a person in need (normally in a 3rd world country) by giving them a cow. Prior to giving it to them the recipient gets trained in the care and economics of cow (or animal) ownership. They learn how to use the animal to produce food for years and how to make money for themselves, their family and community. As part of the program once the recipient receives their animal they must train the next person on what they learned so that they too can receive an animal and share in this prosperity. The inside of the building was pretty neat with exhibits of how the organization worked and where they were. In the back there was a working garden as well as a small barn section with goats, alpaca’s and of course, a cow. We walked through the garden to the barn watching the alpacas stroll around making funny faces at each other. To learn more about this amazing organization check out their site https://www.heifer.org/. From Heifer we biked back to the city stopping for a beer at Blue Canoe brewery before calling it a day, packing up the bikes and heading to the campground for the night.
The next day we woke ready to explore once again. Today was a bit different as it was Easter Sunday. This was our first holiday truly on the road. We had been home for July 4th, with our good friend Melissa for Thanksgiving and back home for Christmas. Today it was just us. As we were not sure what was going to be open we decided that just walking around would be good enough. First stop for the day was one of Little Rock’s oldest neighborhoods, the MacArthur/Quapaw neighborhood. The neighborhood was located directly next to downtown but it seemed a world away. Elegant homes, tree lined streets and a huge park were just a few things that the neighborhood had going for it. To our surprise the neighborhood had its own small brewery. This in its own wasn’t too unexpected but that it was open and they were serving breakfast was unexpected. We had already eaten a light breakfast in the van but we thought, why not, it’s a holiday so we headed in, had a beer and a 2nd late breakfast. It was a good decision. Brunch was great and so was the beer. Check out Stone’s Throw Brewing if you’re ever in Little Rock.
After strolling the neighborhood for a bit longer we hopped in the car and headed to Little Rock Central High School. This school was the scene where in 1957, 9 black students tried to enter the school to begin classes due to the desegregation ruling of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Many southern states fought this ruling with Arkansas following suit. Since the school is still an active high school you are only able to enter it by signing up for an advanced tour. Across the street though there is a National Park building dedicated to the event and its aftermath. It was moving learning about what the Little Rock 9 as they were called went through during their first year there and how their bravery pushed desegregation (and segregation) in America to front-page news.
Afterwards, since it was Easter we felt that we should do something that we normally don’t do so we looked up movie times and went and saw “A Wrinkle in Time”. Julie loved it. I on the other hand enjoyed the comfortable seat and popcorn. From the movie theater we drove back to the campground for the night.
The next day we woke up excited for the new day. As it was Monday (and not a holiday anymore) the state capitol building was open! After breakfast and a stop at a grocery store to pick up supplies we were off and walking into the state capitol. This was our 21st state capitol visited. This building was pretty neat as it was almost an exact replica (although on a smaller scale) of the capitol building in Washington DC. As there were no tours that day we took our self guided map and walked around the building. (Side Note – If you’ve never been inside your state capitol building before you should go. They are always beautiful and ornate and almost every room is open for you to check out. It’s also free to go!) After touring we hopped in Bubbles and hit the road again.
Next up…We drive east to visit the King of Rock & Roll, eat some BBQ and listen to the blues. Memphis is up next!
