Happenings in the Stacer Household: Hot Springs National Park

On our way home from Michigan, we had about a 24 hour drive ahead of us. So, we broke it into 3 days of travel. Sunday, we headed from Michigan to Indianapolis to see my family one more time and spend the night. On Monday (Memorial Day), we left about 10am and drove to Hot Springs, AR. Why Hot Springs, AR you ask? Well, if you don't know, Bryce and I have this quest to visit every national park together - that's National Park - not Wetland, Forest, Monument, etc as then we'd never accomplish the goal. We've been to quite a few already like Big Bend, all 5 in Utah, all 3 in Florida, and more. You probably didn't even know there was a National Park in Arkansas... and for good reason. It's very different from most National Parks as there really isn't a park... it's all about the Bath Houses.

We arrived about 8:30pm on Monday evening and promptly checked into our hotel and started baths/bed for everyone. Evan actually slept pretty well which was a relief because we were in a hotel. Caitlin did okay as well. We were all up early though so I took advantage and went to the one bath house that still operates to try it out. It was an interesting experience. The whole process took about an hour but it was neat to do all the steps. The first step was relaxing in the whirlpool bath for about 15 minutes. Then a sitz tub for about 10 min, a sauna like metal box for a few min, then the hot pads which was also relaxing, and finally a needlepoint cool shower. It would have been nice to top it all off with a massage, but I didn't have time since I'd left Bryce with the kids and we had a National Park to see!

We got all packed up and headed to the visitor's center for the park which is in the Fordyce Bath House. After talking to the ranger, we realized there wasn't anything to really see except this Bath House as all the others were just buildings now. We toured the bath house which was interesting... Evan enjoyed running all over the place. After, we walked along the Grand Promenade behind Bath House row. There are a few trails on the hill behind the bath houses, but they were really short and didn't offer much so we just did the promenade. We got to see and feel the hot springs coming out of the mountain though. And after that, we'd done about everything that had to do with the National Park so we headed for Austin.

I definitely only recommend this park if you happen to be driving through. There's not enough to do to make it a vacation on it's own in my opinion. I'm glad we took the time to see it though. If we'd had more time, they have an observation tower (not operated by the park) that I might have liked to have seen. And driven up the mountain more. The area is very pretty.