SKRAPS: October 14, 2015 - It's my BIRTHDAY!! Choctaw, Oklahoma

Happy Birthday to me!   I got the sweetest gift ever - my lil C singing in his sweet little voice Happy Birthday!   I cry every time I watch it and I can't stop watching it.   He is truly the love of my life!

Well today was a travel day. It was a safe one so I'm always grateful when we have an "uneventful" travel day. We are now in Choctaw, Oklahoma - just about 20 or 30 miles outside of Oklahoma City.   Tomorrow the plan is to go into the city and see the Murrah Memorial. I understand it is a very moving experience.
It's a the site of the federal building that was bombed in 1995 and 168 people lost their lives. Not exactly uplifting but important I think.

Now back to yesterday and the bathhouses in Hot Springs. They reminded me of the state hospital where I used to work in some ways. The equipment they used looked like tools for torture and the sterile tiled walls and white porcelain and marble everywhere.
But I digress the bathhouses were prescribed for some people back in the day who had a variety of ailments.    It was also a place for self indulgent wealthy people to avail themselves to massages, exercise and fresh air. The bathhouse that is now the National Park Visitor Center is open for self guided tours. There were separate areas for each gender, and included changing rooms, cooling rooms, even staterooms where the patrons could stay. A beauty salon and large gym with the earliest forms of exercise equipment.
There were small rooms with individual large procelain soaking tubs and then cold "needle" showers which were really just multi- head showers of cold water.

I have to say there were a string of people coming and going from the one bathhouse we saw that was open for business. I stuck my arm in the public fountain, it was wonderfully warm.