To the Hot Springs!

by Donaji on April 1, 2009

MEMPHIS, TN TO HOT SPRINGS, ARKANSAS (181.39 miles)

Welcome to Arkansas After Memphis, we spent the night in West Memphis, Arkansas, just after the border. Ryan really wanted to stop by Hot Springs in Arkansas so we did and I’m glad. It was a nice quick stop and although we didn’t get to see much of the springs, we got to talk around the little town, full of history, and beautiful historical buildings, still standing but closed. We walked down “Bathhouse Row” reading about each bathhouse that was open back in the 1800s. Apparently they used them as what we now know as spas, but then they were therapeutic pool. The whole bathhouse practice exploded and people used them until they closed. Eventually, they were rebuilt and now they are closed but they offer tours. They’ve become historical sites, although I think a couple looked like they would be open, but for some other business.

Down the street there are shops, restaurants, etc. The architecture around the town is beautiful, some looks like hasn’t been restored/rebuilt. There’s a really nice brick path that goes along the back of the bathhouses, you can sit on the benches surrounded by trees, flowers, fountains, and hot springs here and there. We met a couple who were on vacation there from Texas, they asked us to take them a picture, we took a few and they did the same thing for us, nice…cause there isn’t always a spot to set the camera on self-timer :)

There’s about 47 hot springs, of 140-something degree water. I’ve never seen any other hot spring so I thought it was peeerty cool, you can see the steam hovering over the water, the water was hot enough (not burning) for a hot bath although I can’t do hot tubs (too hot for me), I wanted to jump in. We thought about soaking our feet but I didn’t feel comfortable with people walking by, specially tourists. Ryan didn’t seem to care but we ended up going back to the cars to get something to eat.

We’ve been doing this trip with our bikes on Ryan’s car, on the back so we were always paranoid the’d be stolen. We didn’t get to enjoy as much of Hot Springs as we would’ve liked to because of that, there’s even a couple of trails to hike which would’ve been nice to do. So, we drove our cars and had a yummy oven baked pizza, very dilicious in a pretty interesting Italian restaurant, wish I had my camera. After lunch, we drove to Van Buren, AR.