We left the Ball’s acres and headed for a delightful drive through Central Arkansas. So pretty- very green with all the deciduous trees just leafing out. We got some rain (we had a crazy thunderstorm the night before we left) along the way, but nothing too heavy. We had laundry to do so we stopped in Hot Springs , the town, and went to All Washed Up laundromat run by the cutest, friendliest little woman. If you gotta stop and do chores, it is nice to go somewhere friendly.
We got to the Hot Springs KOA fine but it is a pain to get in to this narrow driveway. And the propane guy was here blocking off the secondary path. Sheesh. Then we struggled to get Li’l TG off because the rig lights were on so it locks up the car and then we blocked the primary entrance. Ahhhhh….but Dave figured it out and we were escorted to our site. The sites are close but we are in the back so it doesn’t feel overly crowded. Apparently they have had crowds for the last week. On Wednesday night it was only half full because those who came to see the totality of the eclipse are dispersing and heading back home now.
Since there was a crazy storm coming in, we chose to spend our first full day in the museums of Little Rock. We started with the Arkansas Historic Museum which was a kind of funky place focused on Arkansas made things. There is a quite a history of forging knives here including a guy named James Black who designed the Bowie knife. The knife room was interesting. Arkansas was also the home of mass producing “fancy” furniture and silverware so that normal people could afford to have “fancy” pieces. Probably helped end the market for all the artesian furniture makers and silver smiths!
Then we headed to the Bill Clinton Presidential Library. As always, a very interesting place. With all the emphasis on negative politics, you can forget the work a President actually gets done. It was interesting to see his daily calendars and many of the weird gifts he received from world leaders. He was the first to have a staff that very closely represented the racial makeup of the United States. He also brought a national standard to education, which better or worse at least made some states start trying to educate their students! And of course the Brady Bill which caused over 100,000 declined permits to people with felonies, violent mental illness and restraining orders. First time! It was also interesting to learn about his friendship with Nelson Mandela. And I didn’t remember that this time was one of the best economically even though the Senate was 50:50 and tried to stop many of his programs. So interesting over all- so far all presidential libraries we’ve been to have reminded me of the good in politics. Probably because they glide over the bad.
After we ate lunch by the river, we went to the Little Rock Central High School center, where the 9 black kids tried to integrate the school. Very sobering to realize how much hate came out even then (1957). It is a very well presented museum and hit me pretty hard. It is sad that all those students wanted to do was go to a real school, especially in light of how much the value of education has dropped recently. To be spat on by the State Guard and police officers! Again, it is history, but history when there is video and audio recording of what is happening. Several witnesses remarked that people seemed to be somewhat upset by how polite and well mannered the black students were when compared to the white ones! I thought that was a pretty funny observation.
Hot Springs National Park was a very different kind of NP than we are used to. First off it is small- a lot of it is along Central Ave where there is a row of 100+ year old bath houses. The water was thought to be curative and elaborate houses were built downstream from the hot springs (which just come out of the hill). There is a beautiful brick, wide path behind the bath houses because exercise is part of the holistic cure. It was very shady and had benches, small alcoves around a few hot springs, and even checkers/chess boards at one end. Most of the houses were rebuilt at least once and updated. They had gyms, beauty salons, parlors, reading rooms etc. Everything from migraines, hysteria, arthritis, polio to syphilis was treated there. Not sure how the last was helped but ?? The tubs are big and deep, and they also had these weird sauna things that a person went into with your head outside. It said they took those to 140F! Surprised people didn’t pass out! Overall they were very fancy.
We also went up on a drive to the mountain lookout tower – Dave went to the top while I read down below. Nope, nope, nope! Then we had lunch at an overlook and headed down to find one of the cool water springs to fill our jug. It was so crazy!
