Chilling Out on Bathhouse Row

Placid. I normally prefer visiting national parks where I can get away from hordes of people. I seek solitude when I need to rest and recharge. However, in my quest to visit all of the national parks units, sometimes my adventures take me to more urban areas. I deal with the crowds and the traffic, all to see whatever made Congress designate an area as a protected national park. In mid-March I drove up into central Arkansas and explored Hot Springs National Park, the heart of which is Bathhouse Row in the middle of the city of Hot Springs. I was not disappointed! Bathhouse Row boasted several buildings open to the public, including the park bookstore, the visitor center/museum, a functional day spa, and a restaurant/micro brewery.

I spent several hours exploring the buildings and grounds, tracing the paved walkways across manicured lawns to open hot springs and springs with caps over them. Fountains were everywhere, spewing hot water into the cool air, leaving tendrils of mist hanging above them. There was even a fountain where you could fill up your jug with spring water, and yes, it was safe to drink! My experience with hot springs is with Yellowstone National Park, where the boiling hot water sends clouds of stinking vapor into the air. The whole area smells like rotton eggs. Not so at Hot Springs National Park, however. The water is clean and sulphur-free, though it does come out of the ground piping hot. This warmth led those who discovered the springs to create bathhouses, and sell the "healing" spa packages that led to the creation of the historical Bathhouse Row. I would love to spend a day actually enjoying myself at the spa house on-site, but I chose to spend the limited amount of time I had seeing what else the park had to offer. Plus there was a several-hour wait at the first-come-first-serve spa, and I didn't have the patience for that.

Bathhouse Row sits on a narrow street, squeezed between two mountains that effectively forms a bridge from one side of Hot Springs to the other. The city is sort of laid out like an hour glass, with Bathhouse Row the middle point where the sand squeezes through. The sand in this case is the traffic. It is definitely a tourist resort town! There were so many people and vehicles, even at 9am on Saturday morning. You could hear the traffic from inside the museum, though I imagine that inside the functional spa they have some sort of music to drown the noise out. It's sort of funny, though, that once you get behind the row and take a walk in the lawn the noise of people goes away. Or at least I don't remember it. Maybe the buildings block the majority of the noise, or maybe I was just focused on enjoying my walk through the steaming grasses, but I much prefered it to the bustle of the street. Perhaps that's a reflection of me prefering the outdoors?

I do have to say, it was a little unfortunate that none of the hot springs were left in their natural state. I know that development and modernization happen, especially around something as neat as hot springs (that don't smell) but I would have like to see the springs as they originally were found. The park service has done a great job of replicating a couple of the spring's natural states, but there is only so much they can do. With people wanting to bathe in and drink the spring water, they have to cater to what the majority wants. Still, it was a neat little area in the heart of a city that I wasn't sure I'd enjoy. The national park itself actually encompassed the mounains surrounding the city as well as Bathhouse Row, so my next stop on my Hot Springs adventure was to go up!