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.

Race Against Time and Harvey

I lit out early from San Antonio yesterday and drove the whole day Northeastwards across Texas, arriving in Texarkana in the evening.  It was one of the longest driving days of my trip.  The reason for the haste is that I’m running two races.

The first is against Hurricane Harvey, which made landfall last night on the Texas coast last night as a Category 4 Hurricane.  In Laredo and as far North as San Antonio the highway signs were flashing warning messages: “Hurricane Warning for Texas Coast / Travel to Texas Coast Discouraged.”  I was trying to outrun it.  When I left San Antonio it was a warm, bright overcast day and I risked putting the top down.  I then watched the sky go through some uneasy changes, with dark grey rags and streamers moving in under the high blue overcast.  It looked not so much like the periphery of the hurricane as a sky aware of its presence nearby, feeling its effects, perhaps able to indulge in some mischief of its own while the attention of the larger weather gods were elsewhere.  But I kept moving, and stayed North of it; the clouds brightened again, and never rained, and toward evening I even poked out into sunshine as I pulled into Texarkana.

The second race I’m running is against my driver’s license, which is due to expire Aug. 28.

My real driver’s license, you’ll recall, was stolen with my wallet in Mexico City, and WSDOL mailed my replacement license on July 18 by regular mail to Hostal Cuija in Mexico City, where it never arrived.  Since then I’ve been driving with a temporary permit that I convinced them to email me; this permit is what’s due to expire on August 28.  But I have a plan in the works—or actually, by accident, two plans.

I’ve sent in another “Lost License While Out of State” form, and this time I cleverly put an address in the U.S.: that of a friend of mine in Chicago who volunteered for the task.  Even WSDOL’s snail mail should reach him expeditiously.  When he gets it he’ll send it on to me wherever I am.  (Thank you!!  You know who you are!)  Then, just yesterday—AFTER I’d sent in the form—I suddenly received an email from Hostal Cuija: my original replacement license finally arrived!  So I’ve contacted my friend Brett in Mexico City, who’s going to pick it up and express-mail it to me. 

The upshot is I now have two replacement licenses en route to me.  However, neither will likely reach me by August 28.  Hence my haste: I’m trying to get to Memphis by Monday.  I figure if I have to wait a day or three until I can drive again, that’s a fine place to do it. 

In the meantime, I crossed Texas.  And for once I got off the highways and took the back roads.  My plan for the U.S. portion of this road trip is to take a page from “Blue Highways” and follow the smaller lines on the map.  The Miata cruises happily at 55, and taking it onto the superhighways has always been a nuisance: not only is it antisocial, as a slow car, but it’s antithetical.  A Miata is all about enjoying the experience, while Interstate driving is all about eliminating it.  So at San Marcos I got off on Route 21, through towns like Bastrop and Dime Box, and spent the day rolling through the wide green Texas farmlands.  It was no slower—in fact the speed limit on these country roads was 75, and cars were still bunching up behind me until either a passing lane appeared or I pulled over for them—but it was prettier.

And in the town of Bryan, on the corner of Wm. Jennings Bryan street, I found my smalltown restaurant with pie.  It was called Must Be Heaven, and the pie was delicious.

Laredo to San Antonio - Mexico Through the Mirror

At first glance, Laredo, the border town, is wholly American: coming from Mexico you get the full culture shock.  Roads are smooth, everything is clean, parkinglots are vast, restaurants have doors, business signs are printed.  You have crossed the line into the First World, and the difference is stark. 

                                                

But Mexico is still present in Laredo.  In the stores I went into, and especially the restaurants, the music of the Spanish language could be heard fluttering back and forth behind the counters, amongst the clerks and waiters.  It made me wonder how many of those cars crossing the border were Mexicans who live on one side and work on the other.  Laredo thus seems bilingual, even bicultural, but in the manner of a lap joint, with the USA sliding in on top to fit to its neighbor.

By “the USA,” it should be understood, I mean the Land of The Franchises and Home of the Brands, for Laredo is a mighty shopping strip for big box retail.  Coming from Mexico, the triumph of cold reiteration has its appeal of familiarity: an IHOP breakfast, a Sprint store to plug back into my cellphone account, TWO Best Buy stores, were all within range of my hotel.  Given that my animating image of America was a smalltown restaurant where I could get coffee and pie, there nevertheless remains something soothing and efficient in this world of prepackaged experience. 

(The Best Buy, alas, didn’t have a replacement camera body for me.  They had the Sony a5100, and I was tempted, but I have three Canon lenses, dammit.  So I’m still taking pictures with my iPad.)

I got another last look at Mexico, in the rear-view mirror as it were, up the road in San Antonio, where I arrived in time to visit the Alamo yesterday.

A thunderstorm was clearing off leaving the streets puddled and the air still humid as I arrived at the site in downtown San Antonio, where the old stone building and the low walls of its compound are preserved amidst banks, hotels, and office buildings.  (Entry is free, but parking costs $15.00.)  The Alamo is probably the most curious tourist attraction in America.  It commemorates a battle lost, not even by the United States, but by rebellious settlers within Mexico fighting to establish Texas as a third country.  Yet somehow the massacre has been appropriated as a patriotic American symbol, to the point where flags of all 50 states stand inside the building alongside metal plaques naming the fallen.  The building was originally a church before it was a fort, and a twisted version of the sanctity remains: visitors must remove their hats and take no photos as they contemplate the last redoubt of brave soldiers. 

Inside, the old stone is a mottled white like palsied skin.  It’s a small space, undecorated, with nothing in it, and aside from the plaques and the scale model showing the cannon placements there’s nothing to see.  Perhaps that’s why they’ve added a large garden outdoors, and a living history exhibit, and a film about the battle, and a great stone bas-relief monument, and a gift shop.  Part of the garden is given over to a series of standing panels showing the history on a timeline, and I was struck by the illustration of Miguel Hidalgo, founding father of Mexican Independence.  Whereas in Mexico he is represented (everywhere) as a larger-than-life, leonine, heroic figure, the picture here showed a gnome-like little priest amid books.  Farewell Mexico.

I liked downtown San Antonio.  The streets are broad and clean, the buildings large and handsome, traffic light, and a great, spacious quiet reigns over it.  I had lunch prematurely at an expensive hotel restaurant near the Alamo, prematurely because I then found, just a few blocks further on, dozens of better restaurant possibilities along what they call the “Riverwalk.”  This is a boutique remodelling of the city’s little river into an upscale promenade, sunken below street level so you descend on stairs into a separate world of meandering tan stone walkways along the water, overhanging trees, romantic arched bridges, tray-like canal boats going by, and, on both banks, a line of tony restaurants and expensive hotels.  It’s an open-air shopping and strolling galleria, and the only element that doesn’t participate is the old river, whose murky waters slop sluggishly with the unmoving detritus of leaves and litter.  It was a nice place to walk.

When I came back up to the streets I found myself before the “Buckhorn Saloon Museum,” an emporium of antlers, stuffed animal heads, and the promise of tacky Texas glories inside, including Bonnie and Clyde’s “actual car!”  I bought the ticket for $20 and went in, and added an $8.00 beer from the saloon to carry with me into the museums in back.

There was enough taxidermy on display to be sad (including a room full of stuffed fish), but this was the kind of place that celebrated guns, gunfights, hunting and carnival sideshows—a little bit of everything for the 1950s boy in you.  There was an exhibit on the history of the old Texas Rangers, others on P.T. Barnum and Buffalo Bill, skulls of both Asian AND African elephants (interesting to see the difference) and whole rooms dedicated to obscure target-shooting marvels from the turn of the century.  Oh, and the car was indeed a lovely old 1930s sedan—with “bullet hole” stickers plastered all over it.  In short, it was good tacky fun, but not worth the $20 (and I couldn’t finish the beer).

Run For the Border

There’s not much to tell about my last two days in Mexico.  From Xilitla it was a straight shot to the border.  The first day’s drive was very scenic on a lovely smooth two-lane road, with high grass growing right up to the edge of the road and green fields beyond, really the nicest driving of the trip, like driving in Ireland.  I spent the night in Cuidad Victoria, a typical blot of a run-down Mexican city in crumbling cement, where the hotel actually had an underground parking garage (score!) and where I did my laundry.  There wasn’t much else to do in Cuidad Victoria.  The second day took me through Monterrey and on to the border crossing. 

I’m sorry to not be sorry about skipping Monterrey.  I gather that some people are very proud of it.  I missed my turnoff for the ring road and took the highway straight through the center of town, so I did get a glimpse when I looked up from the chaotic traffic.  Tall metal skyscrapers like electrical components, billboard signs for American franchises like Home Depot and Office Max, a last spur of dramatic mountains hazed brown by smog.  And I was through.

From there, the drive was on ever bigger highways through ever bigger land, wide flat scrub desert from horizon to horizon, the road a shimmering ribbon into it.  The further North I went, the more the thermometer climbed: 70, 80, 90.  It was a strange feeling approaching the United States from Mexico.  I could feel it ahead, the long straight line of it, like a great weight pressing downwards.  I thought of all the desperate migrants making the final stage of their approach through this land.  Around me on the highway were mostly big trucks, some with Texas plates; armadas of them were moored at the truck stops and weigh stations in the dust.

At the border in Nuevo Laredo the temperature hit 100 and I had to stop at the Banjercito on the Mexican side to officially log my Miata out.  A great parkinglot behind a chickenwire fence rose and fell and glinted chrome, behind which ran a long dilapidated government building, white with huge black letters.  Literally pouring sweat and having to wipe my brow on my sleeve every minute wasn’t, I thought, the best look for applying to cross the border, but there was nothing for it but to clamber out of my Miata and give it a try.  The entrances to the Banjercito side of the building were closed off with hanging police tape, so I had to walk the length of the building—passing a marching file of armed soldiers in camouflage—and go in through the side marked “MIGRACION” where all the Mexicans herded in a room of plastic seats waiting their turn.  Fortunately my side was sparsely populated, the paperwork went quickly, and I was able to go back to Pepin and peel my vehicle permit sticker off her windshield (it left behind a sticky residue).

From there Google had some last fun with me, routing me to the border crossing via the back streets of Nuevo Laredo (there must be a major road for this), through one more slum where I crawled over jagged cement speed bumps, dodged potholes, and peeked around blind unmarked corners.  Then I joined the hundreds of cars inching toward the checkpoint.  “Welcome to the United States of America!” Google Maps crowed suddenly, about ten cars premature.  But I got through, and in, with no trouble.

I spent last night here in Laredo, just on the American side, at a pleasant faceless hotel (“Extended Stay America”) on a pleasant faceless suburban retail strip.  It was very strange to be able to chat about the heat, in English, with the large friendly guy checking in alongside me, and to go to dinner at a little suburban bar and grille nearby with air conditioning and multiple TVs showing sports where I ordered a burger with sweet potato fries from the menu.  It was like waking up from a dream, or perhaps falling into one.

There was one readjustment I had to make at once.  As soon as I crossed the border, of course, my little Panasonic cellphone with the Telcel plan, that I’d bought in Acapulco, ceased to get data.  I found my hotel by grace of the blue Navigation line still showing on the screen, and once in my room I connected to the hotel wi-fi, found a Sprint store in Laredo, used my mobile printer to print out the map to it, forged back out into the oven-like heat, and drove over.  At the store I was hoping they could simply add the Panasonic phone to my plan—it’s a fine little phone, and I like it—but it wasn’t “compatible” (in fact, the very notion of a Panasonic cellphone made the clerks laugh).  So, yes, I had to buy ANOTHER cellphone, the third such of my trip.  This one at least is financed on my normal plan and has my proper phone number.  

Back in my hotel room I spread out my United States map, and tried to figure out my route from here to Algonkian Park, Virginia, the great inauguration of Part II of my travels.  But the heat and the weight of the burger caught up with me, and I fell asleep.

I'm back in the USA.

The Enigma of Las Pozas

I’m currently in the little town of Xilitla, still within the green mountains of San Luis Potósi.  Xilitla is a couple of cement-paved streets and crowing roosters on a hillside, plus someone blasting hop-hop music from a parked car under my hotel window.  The only reason I’m here is to see the nearby attraction of Las Pozas, which I did yesterday.  It was probably my last tourist attraction in Mexico, as from here I head straight for the border, but it was probably the most bizarre of all.

I’d heard of Las Pozas, and seen travel videos about it, and music videos set it in, and had fellow travellers at hostels recommend it.  In the name of all of the above, I think I’ll describe what it is by quoting my Lonely Planet guidebook:

“Las Pozas is a monumental scultpure garden built in thick jungle that links a series of concrete temples, pagodas, bridges, pavilions and spiral stairways with a necklace of natural waterfalls.  The surrealist creation stands as a memorial to the imagination and excessive wealth of Edward James (1907-84).  A drop-out English aristocrat and poet, he became a patron of Salvador Dali in the late 1930s and subsequently went on to amass the largest private collection of surrealist art in the world.”

What the rich, mad Old Worlder left behind here amid the steaming heat and draping, overhanging foliage is something like a gargantuan ruined playground based on the works of M.C Escher and Dr. Seuss.  You follow narrow paths through the jungle to come across one inconceivable cement structure after another, huge surrealist flights rising in spirals and pillars, with bulbs and domes, towers, unreachable rooms high in the air, stairs going nowhere, windows to nothing, multiple stories that don’t connect.  It’s an attempt to bring the symbols of a children’s book to life, and somehow it’s the kind of thing that could only be found in Mexico, wild fancies manifested in heavy drab cement and left to decay, like some abandoned socialist garden.  You admire it in surprise and a kind of pity.  The connecting stairs and paths hide one construction from another and make you quite sweaty as you seek them out, but the most charming aspect is just the gateways and the hidden routes, leading you on, until you loop back and realize you’ve seen it all.  The guidebook said one could spend a whole day there, but I finished sooner.  They give you a rubber bracelet with an electronic chip in it when you enter, and you hand it back when you leave.

The site has a nice café where I had lunch. 

(Photos taken with my iPad...I still miss my camera)