June 4-12, 2006 - Oklahoma and Arkansas

Hi Everyone, We are in Hot Springs, Arkansas. This has been a National Park since the 1830's (yes 1 8 3 0 ' s) when the Federal Government decided to preserve the Hot Springs for everyone. Now NO one can go into the baths unless you pay $20 or so! Oh well... Dad and I went for a therapeutic bath and massage today. They do it just like they would have in the 1940's and acutally use an old bath house building. You can wear a bathing suit if you want to, but no one did while we were there. The men bathe on the first floor and the women on the second floor. You undress in a private room and the attendant wraps a towel around you. They run the special Hot Springs water from the Hot Springs mountain ( that is located right behind where the row of bath houses used to be) into a private old-fashioned tub in a separate little cubicle. You soak in the 102 degree water for about 15 minutes. Then you sit in a sitz bath with really hot water that soaks your lower back for about 10 minutes. (Dad said it REALLY felt good on his back.) Then you go to a steam cabinet or steam room, just like the old pictures show. They close you in the cabinet with just your head sticking out and they wrap the towel loosely around your neck to stop any steam from inside the cabinet from escaping. They usually keep the women in for 5 minutes but Dad said the men stay in a steam room for 10 minutes. Then you go to the "needle shower" for a few minutes. This is a shower where all of the water comes from small nozzles on pipes that run veritcally from your knees to your neck and 3/4 of the way around your body. Kind of like a whirlpool shower... Then you go lay on a table with hot towels on various parts of your body and a cold towel around your face. You relax there for about 15 minutes. Then you go in for your massage. Yep, I did it. All of it felt good except when they worked around the base of my neck and my upper back. Dad said ALL of it felt good to him!

The National Park has preserved the old bath houses that were in use up until about 1980. After the 1950's people stopped coming for the baths and started using medicines instead so the business really died down. The Hot Springs used to run along the street in front of the bath houses. In the 1890's (or so) they built arches to cover the springs with a concrete roadway and built a really nice promenade along the front of the bath houses. There is only one bath house operating on Bath House Row now, but there are a few hotels in the area that offer the baths and the massages. We went to the original one since we wanted to see what it used to be like. There is a really nicely restored bath house that the National Park Service has as a visitor center. There are a couple of informative movies and you can walk through all of the old areas. There was a gym with exercise equipment designed in the late 1800's/early 1900's. The bathing rooms and waiting rooms were very opulent and reminded me of the old Roman baths. Stained glass windows, lots of marble, solid wood doors on the dressing rooms. It was all first-class for the time.

After we did that we drove through the Ouishita National Forest area again (it continues from Oklahoma).

We are going to a Science Center tomorrow that I hope is neat. Then we are leaving to head to the Bufalo National River area north of Hot Springs.

Email me back about what is going on in your life this week!

Love, Mom and Dad

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