After months out west, we were finally heading east, and Hot Springs, Arkansas was right on the way. It's a national park in the middle of a town, with old bathhouses, water that's supposed to be 4,000 years old, and a brewery inside the park. So, is Hot Springs actually worth the stop?
Short answer: yes. It's kind of weird, though, and we have one strong food warning.
Back to full hookups
We pulled into J&J RV Park and Storage, about five minutes from the park, and after boondocking for what felt like forever, we were back to society and full hookups.
First job: the SnapPads. Two of them came off in our last video, when we got the fifth wheel stuck in the mud on the way out of Rita Blanca. Putting one back is simple. Fabiola brings the jack down, Nathan lines the pad up underneath, and right before the jack touches he repositions it so it's perfect. Just keep your fingers out of there.
One of the pads looked damaged, so we may need a new one. The rest just needed a wash.
Why we lock our hitch
Before we could unhitch, we had to unlock the hitch. It had been locked for a whole week.
We keep a lock on our GEN-Y gooseneck hitch. We argued a little about whether to call it safety or comfort, but the point is that we don't worry about the trailer coming undone. The worry goes like this: we're overnighting at a Walmart, some teenager decides it would be funny to pull the release, and we drive off in the morning without knowing the RV isn't really attached. It hasn't happened to us, but it's possible, and it comes to mind every time we stay somewhere overnight. With the lock on, we can sleep.
The free dump station story
We dumped our tanks before the drive, at a free little dump station in a county park. Fabiola found it on Campendium. Easy access, free, looked great. Too good to be true, as it turned out. We got stuck there for 40 minutes, with a tree over the solar panels at one point. A pine tree was also up against the roof for a bit, so checking the roof went on the to-do list.
If you want to find spots like that one (hopefully with fewer trees), here's how we use Campendium.
After a week of boondocking we also finally got to take out the garbage. Two full bags.
The wrong visitor center
Fabiola grabbed her national park passport and we went into town. The first visitor center we found was right in the middle of downtown, which seemed strange. It turned out to be the city's visitor center, not the park's, so no passport stamp there.
A fun fact while we walked: this park is older than Yellowstone. In 1832, under Andrew Jackson, the federal government set the hot springs aside. It took almost another hundred years, until 1921, for it to officially become Hot Springs National Park.
The real visitor center is on Bathhouse Row, inside the Fordyce Bathhouse. Fabiola got her stamp, and we found out the tour is free: three floors plus the basement.
Lunch at a brewery inside a national park
First, though, food. Superior Bathhouse Brewery sits right on Bathhouse Row, so you can have a beer inside a national park.
Our honest review. The playlist was great, a lot of Ariana Grande and hip-hop. Fabiola's Reuben was exactly what you'd expect from a Reuben, and that's a compliment. Nathan's burger came with a spicy mustard he didn't love.
The plantains, though. Do not get the plantains. In Brazil we fry plantains too, but these were seasoned on the outside and came out mushy, with a taste neither of us could figure out. It's the worst thing we've eaten in a while. You've been warned.
Does the beer taste different because it's made with the hot spring water? Not really. It's good beer, though.
Is the water really 4,000 years old?
Downtown is small, and we liked it. You can walk up and touch the hot spring water, and one of us didn't buy the 4,000-year-old part. Isn't it just a spring, like every other spring?
The park's answer: the water was radiocarbon dated to about 4,400 years old, and it mixes with groundwater that's less than 20 years old on the way up. So we were both right.
We walked over to the hot water cascade to see whether it was actually hot. This is one place you can put your hands in, unlike a lot of what we saw in Yellowstone. It felt like a hot tub. Comfortable at first, then maybe a little too hot.
Inside the Fordyce Bathhouse
The Fordyce tour shows you what the rich people were doing back when the bathhouses were in business. Some of the rooms are beautiful.
One room has a stretcher that runs on an overhead track. A sign explained it: patients who couldn't walk were carried in on it and lowered into a big tub, and that therapy was recommended for polio, arthritis, rheumatism and paralysis.
Then there are the machines. Fabiola looked at one and said it looked like a torture device. Then we worked out that they were for rehabilitation, basically the physical therapy version of what you'd find at a gym. You strap your legs in and work the muscles. They still look like torture devices.
Finally, something about the hot water itself. Hot Springs sits in the Ouachita Mountains. According to the exhibit, rain falls on the nearby mountains, soaks down more than a mile, gets heated deep underground, and a natural fault lets the hot water come back up to the surface. We figure anywhere with hot springs probably has something similar going on.
The creepy part of the tour
The men's bath hall has a stained glass ceiling, and it's gorgeous. Some of the rest is a little dirty and very strange.
The empty tubs and the sounds of the place reminded Nathan of Return to Oz, the sequel to The Wizard of Oz, with the Wheelers riding around in the tunnels after Dorothy. Fabiola had never seen it, and briefly mixed Dorothy up with Alice in Wonderland.
There was a low basin in one room that we couldn't figure out. Is it for your feet? For sitting? Our best guess is you stand in it, or someone brings a chair in front of it. If you know, tell us.
The mechanical room was our favorite part. All of that hot water and no propane or heater needed, because it comes out of the ground hot. Some of what we took for elevator equipment turned out to be ice machines, used to cool the water down, since it comes out very hot.
So, was it worth it?
It's not Yellowstone. The town is charming, the history is wild, and you can grab a beer at a brewery inside a national park. We didn't see it all, but it's one more park checked off our list, and it was worth the stop.
On the way out, two of the SnapPads hadn't fully snapped in, so we took them off so we wouldn't lose them on the road. They're pricey. They were also still muddy from Rita Blanca, so they needed cleaning before going back on anyway. In the meantime, they work as chocks.
Are we losing our water?
As we pulled out, Fabiola spotted water dripping under the RV and asked if we were losing all of our fresh water.
Nathan's explanation: our fresh tank sensor is broken, so the only way we know the tank is full is when water starts dripping out of a little tube next to the drain valve. He filled it to the max, and with the RV on a slope, some of it was dripping out. The valve was closed, and we had just used water inside, so it wasn't draining.
That mattered, because next we were heading off for a week of boondocking with a possible hurricane coming. Whether we still had water is in the next video. If we don't, Fabiola says it's Nathan's fault.
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