8:15am After a chilly night at the Wal-Mart parking lot in Texarkana, TX and a quick stop at Starbuck’s for coffee, we are on our way to visit Landy (Johnny’s sister) and Steve in Hot Springs Village, AR.
We arrived in Hot Springs at 10:15am, where we met Steve and Landy. Johnny and I hopped into their van and went for a tour of Hot Springs, not to be confused with Hot Springs Village which is 20 minutes away. We stopped at the visitor’s center and took the Hot Springs version walk of their “Walk of Fame”, this is at a much smaller scale from the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Hot Springs is known for its bathhouses. The national park visitor center is the Fordyce Bathhouse. The only operating bathhouse is the Buckstaff Bathhouse .
Fordyce Bathhouse
Landy and I in the Ladies’ Pack Room
Us in the Men’s Bath Hall
Ceiling of Neptune's Daughter in the Men’s Bath Hall
Bathhouse Row
The town offers FREE spring water. There are 6 water spring stations, which locals and tourist come to fill up there water jugs. The average water temperature of the stations is 140 degrees. It takes 4k years from the time the rain hits the ground, trickle through the rocks and come back up to the surface at 140 degrees. Back in the 1800’s the natural spring water was claimed to have cured several aliments such as, arthritis, blindness, liver disorders and syphilis, to name a few.
Us at the base of a “Hot Spring”
Fountain hot spring
We ate lunch at Fisherman's Wharf Restaurant, not to confuse with S.F's Fisherman's Wharf.
Lunch with Landy and Steve
After lunch, we hooked back up with Big Red and Taylor and hauled them to Steve and Landy’s pad in Hot Springs Village. There are 9 various lakes in Hot Springs Village they live on Balboa Lake, which is the largest lake of the 9. They also have 11 golf courses which one of them is private.
Steve and Landy’s home (view from the lake)
After we set up Big Red and Taylor in their new pads, Steve and Landy took us on a boat ride to tour the lake. All the lakes are manmade and are at constant levels year round.
