Tyler and I took off of work this week so we could spend some time with his family in Baton Rouge, before school consumes us. Unfortunately, come Sunday afternoon, Baton Rouge wasn't a safe place to go as so many places and roads were underwater. Our hearts were heavy when we heard his aunt and uncle weren't among one of the lucky ones. Water took over their home like it did thousands of others but they stayed safe and we're grateful for that! We'll hopefully be able to head down soon to help them clean up.
Since we already had off of work, our bags were already packed, and Baton Rouge was momentarily out of the question, we decided to make the most of our days off. Sunday night, Tyler called his mom and she suggested several places to travel to. Once we finally decided on a place, we went to sleep with the intention to leave early Monday morning but it took us a while to get up and get going. As of 11:30 a.m. on Monday morning, "Hot Springs, Arkansas here we come!" We have this wild dream to visit all of the U.S. National Parks once we get done with school so we decided we would just get a head start. We arrived Monday evening and did a little sight seeing before we went to check into our hotel.
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| The cutest little house I've ever seen. |
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| Monday night we drove to the top of west mountain to see the city lights. It was over 1,000 ft. above see level and as you can tell we literally had our heads in the clouds. |
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| "The city takes its name from the natural thermal water that flows from 47 springs on the western slope of Hot Springs Mountain in the historic downtown district of the city. About 1,000,000 gallons of 143 °F water flows from the springs each day. The water percolates very slowly down through the earth’s surface until it reaches superheated areas deep in the crust and then rushes rapidly to the surface to emerge from the 47 hot springs...The hot spring water has been popularly believed for centuries to possess medicinal properties, and was a subject of legend among several Native American tribes." |
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| I woke up with an extremely sore neck/shoulder on Sunday and it was STILL hurting by Tuesday, even after taking medicine. I fell in love with this water bottle because I refilled it with the hot water at every spring we came to and after a couple hours of applying heat on and off, my pain decreased drastically. Didn't take long to convince me that it actually is magical water or perhaps just the placebo effect but either way I felt better. |
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| The next few pictures are from our tour of the Fordyce bath house. This building was used as a sort of spa in 1915 through the 1960's. Men and women could come here and utilize the hot springs by taking baths, getting massages, etc. The idea of bathing in front of several other women is so strange to me but the interior was really pretty so there's that.  |
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| Trying to determine if this marble bench would fit in his backseat to bring home. |
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| some extremely unsettling contraption in the "luxurious" Fordyce bath house. |
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| Took a break for lunch at The Hungry Greek. |
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| St. John Catholic church. |
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| We ended the day with a trip to the aquarium. If anyone knows where to purchase a Pink Rose Urchin I'm all ears. |
Wednesday morning started with breakfast and then a trip to Gaven Gardens.
It was magnificent to say the least.
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| Is anyone else obsessed with their husband? I just think he's so great. I was blessed with the perfect life companion. |
Tyler and I love going to thrift stores and Hot Springs has some pretty cool ones so, that's what we did for the rest of the day. We ate dinner at this amazing German restaurant called Steinhaus Keller. If you're reading this and you're planning to go to Hot Springs please please please go try it.
All in all, we had a great time during our short stay in Hot Springs. We are so blessed to be able to take trips with each other and we're relieved that we made it back safely through all of the rain yesterday.
We've been saying a prayer every night for all of the people who have been impacted by the flooding.
May they never lose faith in this trying time.
Thanks for reading. Until Next time. ♥
-MC
