Hot Springs

23 Jan 2025

Welcome to Hot Springs National Park!

We got into Hot Springs just in time to go to the visitor center, which is actually one of the 8 historic bath houses on Bathhouse Row.

The park had converted the whole bathhouse into a walk-through museum. This started with the first floor with the various bathing halls and resting rooms.

But the real highlight in the visitor center was the stained glass.

Other cool sites around the building are the gymnasium, mechanical room, and fountain in the front lobby of the bath house.

They also had a window into the original spring flow into the building!

We were a little late though, so they kicked us out of the visitor center, so we took a tour of the bathhouse row.

We missed pictures of a couple of the bath houses, but at the end of the row, we found one of the more interesting ones, a brewery!

So we took our first bath of the trip, a beer bath! A flight of 18 beers that the brewery makes.

We had a great time with the brewery, but as we were getting ready to go, they told us there was another 5 taps that weren't on the menu! So we made sure to get that on our list, but it was time to head to the hotel and get some sleep.

In the morning, we hiked up the hill behind the bathhouses. On the way, we encountered flowing springs, capped springs, and a really steep path we decided we weren't up for. We'd killed our legs the last couple of days.

At the top of the hill, Hot Springs has built a huge lookout tower, with a great view of the surrounding area.

So we went up the tower, and the view really was great when the sun wasn't directly in our eyes.

After getting way up in the tower, we started back down the mountain. We even walked the promenade!

Wandering around the town, we found another fountain spouting the the thermal waters in Hot Springs. This one was way hotter than the first, but still bearable. You have to be careful because the spring water can come up out of the ground over 150°F!

Sara fell in love with all the murals around town. We had to take a special lap around town just to get pictures of them all. However, her favorites were likely the wings.

Other interesting bits of architecture we found around town were the Army-Navy Hospital, a water feature in a little park, another thermal water falls and pools, and some great statues. There was art and beauty everywhere downtown.

Eventually we found our way to dinner in a great little pizza place called Grateful Head that had some seriously drafty windows. Sara got so cold she put her jacket back on.

For our second full day there, we decided it was time for a real bath. We had a private bath at the Quapaw Bathhouse with aroma salts. It was lovely. Later in the day we also came back and visited the public pools the bathhouse maintained.

From our bath, we tried going to the cultural center which had an art gallery in it, but the gallery had recently closed, so we instead went across the street to The Gangster Museum of America.

It was an interesting tour, but we were woefully out of touch with the gangsters they were talking about. I think we knew 2 or 3 of the many names that the tour guide talked about.

Eventually they did move to topics we could grasp though, moonshining and gambling. They had examples of moonshining stills and the labeling system they used to smuggle the moonshine out with regular water back in the day.

They also had examples of table games and slot machines from the era, including a listing of taxes that the various casinos in Hot Springs would have to pay on their gambling equipment.

From there, we wandered back down the row, having a nice soak at the Quapaw baths again, and then stopped into Superior Bathhouse Brewery to try the rest of the beers.

The bartenders recommended we head up the street to the Arlington Hotel to see some of the opulence originally built a hundred years ago. It did not disappoint.

It was starting to get dark and so we headed back to the hotel and get ready to head out in the morning. Hot Springs sent us a great farewell in the form of this gorgeous sunrise.