The Smallest of the National Parks #15
Some people don't like being in a car, driving, but I have to say I think it's kind of fun. I wouldn't want to start a new career as a truck driver or anything and no, I don't want to retire with an RV, but once in awhile a road trip is exciting.
Kyle and I decided to take this particular road trip to bring my daughter, Mariah and her husband Nick their second car after their move to St. Louis. And, of course, if I were going to drive all the way to Missouri I wanted to see if there were any National Parks along the way. And yes there were!
We packed up the car and off we went. Kyle and I drove all the way to Ft. Smith, Arkansas in one day! We spent the night and after getting up early we were on our way to Arkansas Hot Springs National Park.
This was very different from every other National Park I'd been to before. First of all, this park is free as the town was built around it. The "park" is a series of Bathhouses built on one street. The attraction? Water. Old documents state that the Native Americans knew about and bathed in the hot springs in the late 1700s. The average temperature of the water is 143 degrees and it comes from deep within the Earth not from volcanic sources. Scientists estimate that this water is 4,000 years old! It is this along with the minerals that the water contains that people believe give it their therapeutic properties. People also drink from the cold springs which have different mineral make up. All of this history was fascinating and we couldn't wait to check it out.
We decided to take a stroll down Bathhouse Row while we waited for our tour at the restored Fordyce Bathouse to begin. One of the bathhouses has been converted into the park's visitor center and so we made a stop there.
I filled up my water bottle at the drinking fountain inside the visitor center. Each drinking fountain on the row had these signs above them as each has their own unique mineral components.
Here are some images from the beautiful bathhouses we walked by:
Back at Forydyce, we were ready for our tour. The lobby was beautiful! It had Italian marble on the floors and walls, stained glass windows, and a brass room boxes. The Fordyce Bathhouse opened in 1915 and cost $212,000 to build.
We started our tour on the ladies side of the bathhouse. The men's entrance was to the left of the lobby and the ladies to the right.
First stop was the ladies bath rooms, like stalls with doors. Each visitor would have an attendant who would regulate the bath water and take care of any needs. People may have appointments to do this multiple times a day. The whole process took about 1 1/2 to 3 hours. In the bathhouse there were also sitz baths, steam showers, and saunas.
Next to the bath rooms was the cooling room and toweling area.
In the center back of the bathhouse on the first floor adjoining the women's and men's bath halls was a therapy room. It was really crazy what kinds of treatments happened in this room. They had a ice box and a steam box, high pressure water hoses that a doctor would squirt at you, an enema table, and more. Yikes! No thank you!
From this point of the tour we ventured onto the men's bath hall. Mr. Fordyce built this bathhouse after experiencing some healing aspects of this mineral water himself and you can obviously tell that he anticipated that men would find this a more popular attraction than women. He was ultimately wrong. In this anticipation however, he had an entirely different look for the men's bath hall vs. the women's. Check it out.
Just a little difference...right?
Anyway, the tour ended here and we were free to roam around the rest of the bathhouse. We decided to go downstairs first. Here we found the boilers for the bathhouse and an open view of the hot springs.
On the second floor we saw the massage and electrotherapy rooms, and also the dressing rooms. In addition there was physical therapy museum among other rooms.
Finally, the third floor housed the music room with a women's and men's sides, a gymnasium, and an atrium where naked sunbathing was popular apparently. The men and women had different atrium hours we were told.
With our tour ended, we went and got a bite to eat in town. Afterwards, I decided to go partake of the only bathhouse open in the off season, but upon arrival I discovered that they have an hour and a half lunch break. Well, as we had quite a long drive ahead of us to get to St. Louis, I sadly took a rain check on the bath experience.
I look forward to going back to this park again and getting to see and do even more!