Hot Springs National Park

Hot Springs, 50 miles southwest of Little Rock, AR, was our 15th and final National Park visit of 2022! We stayed at the park’s campground, Gulpha Gorge, in a lovely creekside site with full hookups. I think we would return to this park just to stay in one of these campsites again.

We had beautiful fall weather during the first week of November, except for the hour we spent in a tornado shelter on Friday night.

From American Indians to visitors during its 19th and 20th-century heyday (including baseball players for spring training), people have believed in the therapeutic power of the water in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Rain and snowmelt trickle into the rocks of the Ouachita Mountains and go on a 4,000-year journey before emerging from the springs heated and mineral-rich and getting piped to the bathhouses and fountains.

There are 9 early 20th-century bathhouses along “Bathhouse Row”. The Quapaw (cover photo) and Buckstaff have been turned into modern spas where you can go for a soak or a massage. And we saw plenty of people filling up water containers at the fountains around town.

The Superior Bathhouse has the only brewery inside a National Park. And yes, they brew the beer with hot springs water!

The ornate Fordyce Bathhouse is the visitor center where you can take a self-guided tour of the 3 floors of rooms that have been restored to their original state.

The main bathing facilities are on the first floor. The men’s room (left) had a fountain and stained glass ceiling. The women’s room is on the right.

Inside the private stalls are tubs and showers, where people would come with prescriptions for various hydrotherapy protocols. Drinking thermal water was also prescribed.

The upper floors had other rooms for various “medical” treatments/pampering and even a pretty lounge and a gym.

There are miles of wooded hiking trails that connect the campground to Bathhouse Row and the Hot Springs Tower that we used a couple of times during the week.

And we spent Friday and Saturday afternoons mountain biking at Northwoods Park. These were “flow” style trails at our competency level so we really enjoyed them.

Next up, we stop in Memphis and Nashville to visit friends!