October 13, 2015 Hot Springs Arkansas

Today we travelled about 50ish miles to Hot Springs.  Quaint little city where the first ever national park was named.   The "park" is not the traditional "park" but rather an urban area that was designated as a national park to preserve the hot springs.   Central Avenue houses several bathhouses and the national park visitor center is a former bathhouse you can tour.   But more on that later.

We first travelled up to the National Park's Mountain Tower.   Gorgeous drive up and up to the tower and then up to the top of the 216' tower for views that seemed to go on forever.  Gorgeous and I'm so glad we went up.  I'm not a fan of heights and with a bit of vertigo lately I was nervous to say the least.  But no issues, except when we entered the bottom of the tower I immediately noticed all the signs posted warning "Beware of the Wasps" - hmmmm?  So sure enough there are two observation levels and the open air one is plaqued with what they call wasps but I call hornets.   I had Gary snap a pic.  So needlessly to say we spent most of our time on the enclosed deck, with no wasps/hornets.  A gentleman working there told me that the wasps are really bad after noon, luckily we were there before that.  Yuck!

I will post more tomorrow on the bathhouses.    And no we didn't take a bath but I stuck my arm in and it was wonderfully hot.