Life Rocks When Your Living Room Rolls: Hot Springs National Park

Tuesday, November 19, 2019 - Hot Springs, AR

Today we headed into town, which is Hot Springs National Park. As we were walking down the street I noticed the name of the store and I just had to take a picture and send it off to Valerie. :)

As we walked down the sidewalk there were embedded historical markers like this.

At the end of bath house row is The Arlington Hotel.

Now we were headed for the Visitor Center, which is in one of the historic bathhouses. When we passed the national park sign I took a picture.

In the park behind the sign was one of the few hot springs that are still open. Next to the spring was a marker with a phone number to call for a phone tour. You just dialed the number and entered number on the marker. We found out that the temperature of the spring at the top of the hill was approximately 143 degrees. And it was still very warm in the pool at the bottom of the hill.

You can't really see the steam from the water at the top of the hill.

This is the Hale Bathhouse. It is a now hotel and dining room.

Here is a picture of one of the markers for the cell phone tour. This one is for the display springs.

And here is the display springs.

We walked up the stairs to the Grand Promenade and I took a picture. The Grand Promenade is behind the bathhouses and goes from one end of Bath House Row to the other end. The visitor center is in the Fordyce Bathhouse, which is on the left.

Here is the front side of the Fordyce Bathhouse.

We went into and talked to a girl behind the counter and asked what all we should see while we are here. She never told us to be sure to check out the self-guided tour of the building we were in. We found out about the tour from the cell phone tour out front the building, which we listened to after we left. So we went back in to go on the self-guided tour. It was very interesting.

This is a "special" room for women; it has some unique bath devices.

This is what the men's bath house looks like. It has a fountain in the middle and is much more ornate than the women's.

They also had a short video on the bathing experience. So after our tour we headed down to the Buckstaff Bathhouse to see if we needed to make reservations. Well it is first come, first serve and they were currently closed for lunch.

So we headed back down to The Superior Bathhouse, which is the only Brewery in a National Park, to have lunch.

This was our view at lunch.

After lunch we walked back down to Buckstaff Bathhouse. They still offer baths they way they were offered in the early 1900's. We got right in and after paying, Mike went to right and I went to the left and up to the second floor.

First you are taken to a dressing room to get ready for your bath, then you are taken to the bathtub. The water is cooled down to approximately 110. You are in the tub for about 20 minutes and you are given a couple of cups of ice cold water to drink.

After the bath I was taken to a cot where they place a hot towel on your neck, back and legs. It really is very relaxing. They keep you wrapped up for about 15 minutes.

Next was the sitz bath. It was like a large sink on the floor. My feet were on a stool outside of the sitz bath. I was not sure how this really worked, so I did not add any additional water. Mike went straight to the sitz bath from the bathtub and he made his sitz bath very hot. They let you stay in the sitz bath for another 15-20 minutes and cook your "privates".

Once I was back in the dressing room I did take a selfie of me in my sheet. :)

I was done before Mike, so I went out and sat on the front porch. What a beautiful day! I took a picture of my view.

Back in 2009 Mike and Mike J came here for a day and just walked around. Mike was sure they stopped at a gazebo on the east mountain, and we finally found it. And I took a picture of it and of Mike relaxing at it. :)