Hot Springs Park and the Ozarks - Down and Up in Hilly Arkansas

Yesterday I woke up in my room at Motel 6 in Texarkana feeling lousy.  Not as if I was coming down with a cold, just generally headachey, out of sorts, and not wanting to move.  Outside it was raining on the parkinglot alongside the highway where the lonesome wail of the big trucks rose and fell.  The last thing I wanted to do was get in my car and drive.  I needed a day off from travelling.  Unfortunately, what with the timing of my expiring license, I couldn’t stay in Texarkana—not that I wanted to anyway.

It’s a very unpleasant feeling to check out of your motel in the rain when you have nowhere lined up to go.  My plan had been to spend a couple of days driving back roads across Arkansas to Memphis, starting with a visit to Hot Springs National Park, finding motels or campsites as I went.  The rain nixed that plan, and for a moment I had no idea where to go.  For a while I simply poked my car around the interconnected retail parkinglots near my motel.  I went to a bookstore looking for a travel guide to the South (they didn’t have one), to a Best Buy looking for a replacement camera body (not in stock), even to a movie theater to look at their matinees (there was nothing I wanted to see).  In the end I sat at a Starbucks for a couple of hours, reading, then, feeling somewhat recovered, booked another Motel 6 in Little Rock, drove two and a half hours down the superhighway, checked in and spent the rest of the day there just relaxing, and going over prep material for my writers’ retreat.  It was the closest thing to a down day I could achieve.

Part of what hit me was indecision.  I’m making up the rules of this mini USA road trip as I go, and I’m being pulled in different directions.  I have two weeks to get to Virginia, which could be done in three days, so the proper thing is to get off the highways and do some liesurely exploring; however, the situation with my license is making me rush to get to Memphis.  I was on the verge of discarding Arkansas completely in my hurry.  And America makes it very easy to hurry.

So today I slowed down, and wound up doing everything I intended to do yesterday.  I went to Hot Springs National Park, and took a day-trip drive up North to the Ozarks and back.  It was a good day.

Hot Springs is a curious National Park.  It’s downtown in a small city, and consists of two parts: a hilly wooded area with trails, like a city park, and a row of historic bathhouses that in one form or another have served up the eponymous hot springs’ water since the 19th Century.  I started with the park, and cheated: instead of hiking I drove up to the top of the hill, where they have a large, phallic view tower added in the 1980s.

By “hill,” it should be understood, Arkansas means “low ridge,” and when one rides the elevator to the observation deck one is not that far above the roofs of the city, though one can look outward across the countryside of gently rolling woods, whose low ridges overlap in a slow fade from green to a hazy blue horizon.

The bathhouses were more fun.  The handsome Edwardian buildings are in a line along the main street of town, all boasting long porches with Adirondack rocking chairs; most are still in operation--and the chairs occupied by men in towels--but one has been converted to an exhibit that you can tour (entry is free). 

Inside, it was a wonderful return to the age of turn-of-the-century therapeutic health treatments.  The white-tiled rooms trimmed with varnished wood were filled with complicated tubs, showers, pipes, nozzles, boxed enclosures, and strange electrical devices; one could practically hear the buzz and smell the steam.  Upstairs were salon galleries with stained-glass ceilings, grand pianos, wicker chairs and pool tables.

What the heck is THAT?   

From Hot Springs (the town) I took Route 7 North—marked as a scenic road on my map—through both the Ouachita National Forest and the Ozark National Forest, and got a look at the Arkansas country.  The day was lovely, 80 degrees and sunny with a soft mild air, perfect for driving a convertible on country roads.   And it’s a pretty country, breathing a soft, homey loveliness: light woods, gentle slopes, green fields, old barns, small working farms, fields of cows.  Through Ouachita I was mostly driving in a trench of trees, with not much to see, but in the Ozarks the fields opened up to vistas of the gently rolling land. 

At one point the temperature suddenly dropped, a shadow fell over my Miata, a glance up showed the top peninsula of a towering thunderhead limned in newly eclipsed light as an ozone reek arose from the road, and I pulled my canvas top over just before a blinding downpour swept through.  After another few minutes the sun beat down again, I patted my roof through the window and found it dry, and I stopped for a second in the middle of the deserted road to fold the top back down.  But the sky continued to advance giant chess pieces of cloud, and it rained on and off again on my way back to Little Rock.

One more night in Little Rock (I say Little Rock, but I haven’t seen it yet; my Motel 6 is on the outskirts by the highways, in faceless-retail land that could be anywhere), then tomorrow I head across the State to Memphis.  Tomorrow, Monday, is technically my last legal driving day, but I’ve arranged with my friend Brett to overnight my driver’s license to the AirBnb in Memphis where I’m staying, and ideally it will arrive Tuesday.  We’ll see!  I’ll be in Memphis through Wednesday (licensed or not, I want to see Graceland, Beale Street, etc. etc.), and after that I’ll be visiting my old buddy Andy in Nashville. 

The mini USA tour continues!

P.S., why do we pronounce Arkansas "Arkansas," but Kansas "Kansas?"  I've been wondering that all day.