My June Vacation in September (Part 3) - Hot Springs, Arkansas, Continued

If you haven't seen the previous two posts in this series, my sister and I try to take a vacation together
at least once a year, and this year, we had originally planned to take the trip in June, but life intervened and we postponed it to September.  We went to Nashville first, then to the main event, Hot Springs, Arkansas.  This post continues the Hot Springs saga!

Taking the advice of one of our cousins who had visited Hot Springs before, we went to the Buckstaff bathhouse for an authentic traditional Hot Springs mineral bath experience.  We weren't allowed to have cameras during the process, so you'll just have to use your imagination!

We checked in, made our way to an upper floor where we waited on benches for our names to be called.  We undressed, were wrapped in sheets toga-style and led to our individual bathing cubicles where we literally climbed, via a step stool, into the biggest bathtubs I've ever seen.  These tubs are long enough that I stretched my legs out straight and had to have a spacer placed behind me so I wouldn't slide down too far!  And they were deep enough that only my head was above the water.  The water, cooled to a temperature of about 110 degrees before being piped to the bathing area, gushed out of a 2-inch pipe to fill the tub.  The attendant turned on an old fashioned whirlpool machine and left me to cook for half an hour with two cups of hot mineral water to drink, which she replenished several times.  "Be sure to keep drinking!"

When the stewing was finished the attendant helped me out of the tub, wrapped me in another sheet and took me to a table where she placed towels soaked in the hot mineral water and had me lie back onto them.  Then she added more hot towels on my legs and arms, wrapped some ice in a cold towel to put on my face, and gave me a cup of ice water to sip.  The whole time I was on the table, the attendant insisted that we all drink our water, and she kept our cups filled.

After the table, I got ten minutes in a sitz bath - basically, you sit your rear end only in a miniature version of the bathtub.  The first few seconds were the hardest - hot seat!!!  After that, it became bearable.  After that, three minutes in the "vapor cabinet."  They don't call them steam cabinets because it's just the "vapors" from the hot spring water, which isn't hot enough to be "steam."  Three minutes was plenty, though!  I must have looked ridiculous, with just my head protruding from a big white box.

After the sitz bath, it was time for a lukewarm "needle shower."  This is an early version of the trendy shower tower panels of today.  There are vertical pipes mounted in the corners of the shower stall with tiny nozzles that make a needle-fine spray over your body, part of the cooldown phase.  After the shower, I could have had a Swedish massage, but there was a long wait, so we decided to skip it.  The attendant led us back to the changing room, where we dried off and got dressed.

After that treatment, we were basically worthless.  Completely relaxed, but worthless.  It was GREAT.

About twenty miles north of Hot Springs is Hot Springs Village, a gated community (the largest in the world!) of mostly empty nesters and retirees.  It's been around a LONG time.  I mean, I remember going to the state fair when I was in high school and seeing a booth in the Exposition Hall with pamphlets about Hot Springs Village.  It was kind of a big deal.  We'd seen a couple of writeups in the tourist information magazines we'd picked up along the way that basically said that if you wanted to visit, you had to enter by the east gate.  So, being the nosy Parkers we are, we decided to drive up there and scope out the place.  We drove on two-lane highway most of the way, and it looked like there was nothing ahead but the boonies, when we started seeing signs to the East Gate.  All right!  Here we go!  It turned out you can't go in without a sponsor - someone you're visiting (and who is expecting you!) or a real estate agent.  We had neither, so we had to turn around and go back to Hot Springs.  It was fine.  We had a nice drive and we got to gripe (but good-naturedly) all the way back about the people who had written those misleading articles.  The one bust of the trip.  If that's the only thing that went wrong, that's not too bad.

Ronaldo's outside area

One of the restaurants we hit was Ronaldo's Speakeasy - delicious Guatemalan fare.  Another was the Ohio Club, a REAL historic speakeasy.  During Prohibition, it was turned into a cigar store up front by the street, but behind was the speakeasy.  We also visited a coffee shop, Kollective Coffee and Tea.  All of these buildings are directly across the street from the bathhouses, so were backed up to the rock face of West Mountain.  Ronaldo's has a back entrance where you climb up some stairs to the back door and an outdoor seating area that's on the mountainside, level with the second floor of the building.  Kollective Coffee and Tea has big windows that overlook the "alley" behind the building.  There are about three feet between the outside wall of the building and the mountain's rock face, so from inside, it looked like the rock face was right up against the window glass.

OH!  There was ONE other thing that didn't pan out.  We had wanted to take a boat tour of Lake Hamilton, but the one day we could go and there was space available it rained.  All day.  All night.  So we missed out on the boat ride.

All in all, Hot Springs was a pleasant surprise.  Plenty to do.  Relatively inexpensive.  We had FUN!  And we never even went to the casino and horse track - HA!

Next, we drove to Memphis, but that's the next post.  Until then...

My June Vacation in September (Part 2) - Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas

If you haven't seen the previous post in this series, my sister and I try to take a vacation together at least once a year, and this year, we had originally planned to take the trip in June, but life intervened and we postponed it to September.  I picked her up in Louisville and drove to Nashville, where we did a little sightseeing.  From Nashville, we drove to Hot Springs, Arkansas, the main event of the vacation.  At 97 degrees, Nashville had been hot, and we were looking forward to going somewhere milder.  But when we arrived in Hot Springs, it was 98 degrees!  And no relief in the immediate forecast.

The first day in a new place is always our orientation day.  Where are the grocery stores, shopping centers, and gas stations?  How do we get to the local places of interest?  So Sunday we drove all over the place, reconnoitering.

We wound up walking around downtown Hot Springs and ended at the Arlington Hotel, a historic building and the largest hotel in town, with 500 rooms.  The dining room was elegantly old-fashioned and the food was amazing!  I ordered a lunch portion of meatloaf, but a dinner portion arrived at the table - three huge slabs - a mountain of meat!

Arlington Hotel

The town was way different from our expectations.  We thought there would be a row of bathhouses and not much else, plus the mountains on either side.  But it's a real for-real town!  The historic downtown sits on the opposite side of the street from the bathhouses, and the newer parts are south of the historic street.  There's a casino and a horse track - the track has been there since 1905!  Hot Springs is where spring training for baseball started.  Babe Ruth and other famous old-time ballplayers were here - and gangsters, too.  So much history!  So much fun!

Our first day, partly because of the heat, we took a couple of tours at the National Park visitors center.  One was a walking tour outside and focused on how the thermal springs work, and we walked to an open

Hot water cascade

spring, plus up to the Grand Promenade to see a whole lot of springs that have numbered protective covers over them.  All the water is piped to holding tanks and sent to thermal jug fountains, drinking fountains, and bathhouses - about 700,000 gallons A DAY.  Unbelievable!  There was also an unnumbered seep in a grassy area.  When one of the people on the tour asked about it, the ranger said it's a new spring that showed up about five years ago!  The hot water from that little spring flowed across the grass and the Promenade, and into the grass on the other side, then soaked into the ground.  The water was hot enough that any grass it touched was brown.

Tufa Trail

After that short presentation, we walked farther down the Grand Promenade to the Tufa Trail, which connects the Grand Promenade to the Arlington Hotel's historic grand lawn and a hot water cascade.  Then back along the main street, Central Avenue, to the visitors center for a tour of the Fordyce bathhouse, which houses the visitors center.  We saw the changing rooms, the bathing rooms, the shower rooms - everything!  There were HUGE bathtubs, sitz baths, "needle" showers, cooling rooms, "vapor cabinets" that looked like something straight out of a 1930s Popeye cartoon, and the hydrotherapy room.

Fordyce Bathhouse "skylight"

The men's changing room had a fancy fountain - an Indian maiden offering a duck to DeSoto.  Seriously - a DUCK.  The guys' side also had a beautiful stained glass ceiling/skylight that included naked ladies.  Oh my!

DeSoto and Duck fountain

Nothing like that on the gals' side!  Upstairs were a gymnasium, gathering rooms, resting rooms.  There was even a roof garden.

Then we walked down to the Superior bathhouse, where they've opened a microbrewery and cafe.  They use the spring water to brew their beers, including ROOT BEER.  We had fabulous portabello sandwiches, potato salad, and root beer floats.  YUM!

Lamar Bathhouse

After lunch, we walked to the Lamar bathhouse, where the National Parks has the gift shop.  They sell glass jugs to fill with spring water if you didn't bring your own.  There were always people filling jugs at the spring fountains, many with multiple gallon jugs.  We had a good time looking at all the fun stuff, then walked back to the Fordyce where we looked at the exhibit rooms and watched a couple of videos - one told about Hot Springs history, and the other demonstrated the typical sequence of a bathhouse treatment.

Hot Springs Mountain Tower

The next morning, I drove up to Hot Springs Mountain and North Mountain to look around and explore the loop road.   There weren't many people up there, so it was quiet.  On North Mountain, I saw a doe and a fawn at the side of the road.  On Hot Springs Mountain, I checked out the tower and discovered that with a National Parks Passport you get a discount on the ride to the top.  Then down to pick up my sister for lunch.

Tower view of North Mountain 

We ate The Purple Cow, a doo-wop style diner - great onion rings, lots of I Love Lucy memorabilia, oldies playing in the background, and PURPLE milkshakes!    After lunch, we headed back to the mountains and up the tower.  Expansive vistas of green hills and deep blue skies met us when we exited the elevator.  We couldn't avoid the gift shop at the base of the tower, and we parted with some folding money there.  Driving down from the mountains we saw another doe and two spotty fawns.

 In the morning I drove up to the mountains again and hiked the two-mile trail that loops around the top of Hot Springs Mountain.  I only encountered two people on the trail, hiking in the opposite direction from me.  It was definitely warm, but shaded, and it wasn't miserable in the mid-morning.  Later the heat was oppressive - again.  That's the way it was every day of this trip - hot hot hot.  Ugh.

All these trips to the mountains sound time consuming, don't they?   But the truth is the historic town of Hot Springs is situated in a narrow valley between Hot Springs Mountain and West Mountain.  Hot Springs Mountain rises directly behind the bathhouses and the historic buildings across the street are backed right up against the face of West Mountain.  When you drive up Hot Springs Mountain, you can look directly down at the roofs of the bathhouses.  There are a couple of steep trails that start downtown and end at the Hot Springs Mountain Tower, and I saw crazy people climbing them in that terrific heat.  Looked like unnecessary self-inflicted torture.  Not me, thank you very much!

The following day, we "took the waters," but that's in Part 3, so you'll have to wait to hear about that!