Hot Springs, Arkansas

I got a map of bathhouse row this morning from the city visitor center. Bathhouse row consists of 8 or so buildings that all used to be hot springs bathhouses on one side of a downtown street. Two of the buildings are still operational bathhouses where you can schedule a hot bath with or without a massage package. To be honest, that doesn't sound appealing on a hot, humid, Summer day. It makes more  sense in the non-summer months. Maybe that's why both bathhouses were accepting walk-ins today.

Bathhouse row and the mountain behind it belong to the Hot Springs National Park. The restaurants, shops, museums, and other buildings on the other side of the street are regular businesses and don't belong to the park. Behind the bathhouses is a mountain with a winding road and switchbacks leading to a 200+ foot observation tower at the top. You can pay to take an elevator to the top (I didn't). There are also hiking trails that start and end several places on the mountain.

One of the former bathhouses is now the National Park visitors center and museum; another is the National Park gift shop; another is an administration building;  and another is a micro brewery, where I got a chili cheese hotdog and some ice cold root beer that had been brewed with natural hot spring water.

The visitor center and museum are in the Fordyce bathhouse building, which has been restored to show how it looked in its heyday. It even has comfortable rocking chairs on the front porch. The baths originally opened in 1915.

I was interesting to learn some of the history. People came to the hot springs mainly for health purposes. Doctors would prescribe a visit to the springs to treat various medical conditions.

The museum is 3 floors, and includes changing areas, rooms with tubs, massage rooms, exercise rooms and equipment, and parlors for socializing. The bathhouses were actually fancy spas. If I were living back then, I woud have thought they were too fancy for me and probably woudn't have gone unless the doctor really pushed it.

The mens baths were centered around a big marble room with a sculpture in the middle and stained glass in the ceiling. The women's baths were more private.

Here are a couple of photos of a parlor for socializing. Socializing was  considered an important part of the therapy.

 
It may  seem  strange to us today, but exercise wasn't generally thought of as an important component of an recovery plan a hundred years ago. (Maybe it's because people already naturally got a lot of exercise back then?) One of the doctors from Sweden considered it important and made sure the bathhouse had a variety of exercise equipment and a large gym for people to exercise as part of their treatment. Evidently it was considered innovative concept at the time.

Some of the poorer people who couldn't afford treatment actually camped and soaked on the mountain behind the baths, and the park supervisor ended up running them off to the other side of the mountain, away from the water supply for the bathhouses.

Here is the composition of the spring water. The water is really refreshing and has no taste or aftertaste.

There are water spigots around town where you can get either hot or cold spring water. You can also see the hot spring water naturally flowing down the hill behind the bathhouses, but it is for looking and not drinking. It is naturally around 143 degrees when it comes from the ground. They say it takes about 4,000 years from the time the water falls as rain, seeps through the layers of rock soaking up minerals, to the time it comes back up through the fault line to the surface as hot spring water. I was surprised it tasted so good (i.e., no taste).

There was a food truck festival on one of the downtown streets, along with an antique car show and other vendors. Should I feel old when some of the "antique" cars on display were models commonly seen in my high school parking lot?

I bought a couple of tie dye shirts from one of the street vendors, and had the artist pose with me for a selfie. She was really nice and I liked her shirt designs. Her day job is pet grooming.

I asked the park ranger for suggestions on a good hike. She said her favorite was the Goat Rock Trail that started part way up the mountain, so that is the one I hiked. The trees, rocks, flowers and other scenery were great, and there were some wonderful views. The birds were chattering away.

I was originally planning on heading North into the Ozarks next, but since Little Rock was less than an hour away I decided to go there next. I got a campsite at Maumelle campground, on the north side of Little Rock. It is on the shore of a lake behind a dam on the Arkansas river. The dams have locks to allow ships to pass, since the Arkansas river is still used for shipping goods. Most of the campers are in RVs, but the camper in the site next to me has a tent and a dog.

My neighbor's name is Zach and his dog is Freya. Zack has traveled all over Arkansas and knows some good places to visit, so I look forward to talking with him and learning more about the Ozarks and other parts of Arkansas.