HOT SPRINGS NATIONAL PARK
Hot Springs: an urban national park
STEPHENS PARK RECREATION AREA
While visiting family in Arkansas this summer, we knew we wanted to visit the state’s one national park: Hot Springs. We booked our campsite too late in the summer season to get a spot at the park’s campground: Gulpha Gorge, but we stayed for three nights 20 minutes away in Mountain Pine at Stephens Park Recreation Area. We chose this campsite because it was small (only 9 sites), had showers, a playground, and was directly on water (Lake Ouachita). Through summer van camping, we are learning we want to be as close as possible to swimmable bodies of water.
Stephens Park Recreation Area, Mountain Pine, Arkansas
SWIMMING AT WEATLEY PARK
It was about a 4 hour drive from NW Arkansas (where we were staying with family) to Mountain Pine. Much of the drive was on beautiful and rural highways and not the interstate. To break up the 4 hour drive, we stopped at Hill Weatley Park in Rockwell to swim. There is designated swimming near the boat launch area. The swimming hole was busy with others taking advantage of some heat-relief on this hot summer Sunday afternoon in late June. We got changed into our suits and enjoyed playing in the water. We stayed longer than anticipated and pretty much closed the place down.
As soon as we arrived at our campsite at Stephens Park, we headed down to Lake Ouachita (about a 10 second walk from our site). The shoreline is covered with pebbles the girls enjoyed playing with.
As Kyle narrates in the video above, it was hot and humid as we set up camp.
SUMMER HEAT STORMS
Growing up my sister, brother and I would fly from southern California and spend summers in Memphis with extended family (and then I eventually moved there with my mom in high school). Spending summers in the south and then moving there in high school, I am well acquainted with the humidity that pushes its way in around Memorial Day and doesn’t let up until you start seeing every small town within a 100 mile radius advertising their fall country craft fairs. While the heat and humidity can feel sweltering, it often gives way to some incredible thunder & lighting storms.
My cousins lived on some acreage outside of Memphis and we loved these heat storms. I can remember many late afternoons watching from their long porch while ominous cumulonimbus clouds formed. As soon as the rain started, my cousins and I would run into the large yard in front of their home dancing and playing as the lighting showed off above us. Every time a heat storm arrived we were entranced all over again— like it was the first time we were seeing and hearing lighting and thunder of this magnitude. It took a great deal for my aunt to get us to come back under the shelter of the front porch. Could we have been struck by lighting? Possibly. But even now thirty+ years later, this is one of the things I remember most with fondness about my childhood summers in the south (that and the fireflies). This was summer. This was childhood.
I don’t remember many times growing up when I felt pure unencumbered freedom. Something about running, dancing and yelping in the rain without worrying over wet hair and messy clothes was liberating. Once in high school and too “mature” to run out in the storms I would still watch them from the small back porch of my home. Those liberated youth summers of rain dancing went by almost as quickly as the heat storms rolled in and out. If I could go back to those high school summers, I would tell my “mature” self to keep running out in the rain.
I think part of the pursuit of these van adventures with our girls is to foster opportunities for them to feel unencumbered freedom. We are before the age when they care what peers think (wet plastered hair is not a fashion faux pas yet in their worlds) or are too self-conscious over their dance moves to respond any which way to what their bodies are sensing. I am pointedly aware that we have these few sweet years as their parents to provide spaces for them to experience this self-assuring (and I would argue confidence-building) freedom.
I hadn’t thought about those Memphis heat storms for some years, but as we set up camp in Mountain Pine, I noticed those familiar cumulonimbus clouds forming. This evening's heat storm arrived after the girls were asleep (or fighting to fall asleep). I watched the distant lighting show from our campsite picnic table while Kyle worked to get the girls to sleep. With each flash of light and rumble of thunder, memories of those childhood summers came back followed by a deep thankfulness that getting out in our van provides space to remember sacred childhood moments, and that I have the opportunity to show my girls heat storm dancing.
LAKE OUACHITA
True to form, the next morning we were in the lake before breakfast. I have no recollection of what we ate for any of the meals on this trip. This was one of our early van camping trips, so I know our go-to meals were not dialed in yet. I know no one went hungry, but what we ate is anyone’s guess.
GARVAN WOODLAND GARDENS
After a leisurely morning of swimming and rock exploring, we headed to Garvan Woodland Gardens. Located about 15 minutes south of Hot Springs National Park, Garvan is a 210 acre botanical garden of the University of Arkansas on the shore of Lake Hamilton. My cousin’s wife is from Hot Springs, so I had seen photos of one of the garden’s more popular attractions (Anthony Chapel) and knew I wanted to come visit. We spent several hours at the garden, but actually ran out of time to see everything we wanted. The garden is open 10am-6pm every day except Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day and the entire month of January. Inclement weather will also cause closures. When we arrived at the garden, we were greeted by peacocks and a docent who gave the girls a scavenger hunt activity for while exploring the garden. With so many points of interest on the map (and the girls wanting to find & color in all the pictures on their activity sheet), we tried to hit them all up, not realizing we needed several more hours. I wish we would have had more time at the Evans Children’s Adventure Garden, but still managed to explore the incredible Bob & Sunny Evans Tree House (definitely my favorite part of the garden) and something that cannot be missed when visiting.
EVANS CHILDREN’S ADVENTURE GARDEN & THE BOB & SUNNY EVANS TREE HOUSE
While the entire garden is beautiful, the Adventure Garden (especially the tree house) is impressive.
ANTHONY CHAPEL
Right before the garden closed, we managed to check out Anthony Chapel. It has seats for about 200 people with flagstone flooring and floor to ceiling windows. The chapel encompasses more than 9,500 square feet of glass. The photos can’t truly capture the beauty of the chapel. Based on the University of Arkansas’ website, it was designed for private events (weddings being the most popular use of the venue) and an opportunity for individual visitors to have a moment of “quiet reflection.”
ANTHONY FAMILY CARILLON
Next to the chapel is the Anthony Family Carillon. This 55-foot tower with 16 copper columns serves as “an orientation point for visitors to the chapel” within the Evans Celebration Garden. We didn’t hear any chimes, but a speaker box suspended for the center of the columns is “designed to chime and play music.”
EVENING SWIM ON LAKE OUACHITA
As soon as we were back to our campsite from Garvan Woodland Gardens, the girls wanted to go swimming. Night walks and night swims are fast becoming some of our favorite camping activities.
CHECKING OUT HOT SPRINGS NATIONAL PARK
After saying good morning to Lake Ouachita, we headed over to Hot Springs National Park. (Monet’s curly hair indicates how humid it was.)
HOT SPRINGS: THE URBAN NATIONAL PARK
Compared to more traditional national parks, Hot Springs is different in that it is located within a town. There are not any entrance gates and no fee to visit. The heart of the national park is located on Bathhouse Row with its eight historic bathhouses. You can see natural/open hot springs and access thermal water fountains outdoors in the town, but to actually bathe in a hot spring that must be done through one of the two working bathhouses (Buckstaff or Quapaw) for a fee.
From the National Park Service website: “Hot Springs National Park is the only national park that protects a unique combination of lithology, geologic structure, and water sources that produce the only nonvolcanic geothermal springs of such high quality (temperature, taste, color, odorless) in the United States.”
After looking at (and feeling) one of the open hot springs, we headed first to the Fordyce Visitor Center & Museum where we learned more about the health seekers in the early 1800s first drawn to the hot springs and what they believed to be their healing properties. The museum provided information about the history and culture of what became the “American Spa.” By the first quarter of the 1900s, eight luxury bathhouses existed (on what became Bathhouse Row) providing bathing, spa treatments, exercise prescriptions and walks on the Grand Promenade. The decline in popularity for thermal bathing in the 1960s caused seven of the eight bathhouses to close. Buckstaff is the only bathhouse that has remained continuously open since it was built in 1912. Quapaw Bathhouse closed in 1984, but reopened in 2008. You must be at least 14 years old to participate in any of the spa services at Quapaw. At Buckstaff Bathhouse, you must be at least 10 years old for any of the bathing or massage treatments. Five of the other six bathhouses on the row are open to the public and serve different functions today: Hale (hotel), Lamar (park store & offices), Ozark (Hot Springs National Park Cultural Center), Fordyce (park’s visitor center & museum), and Superior (brewery—they also use thermal spring water in their brewing process). Maurice Bathhouse is vacant and not open to the public.
Image from National Park Service (nps.gov)
GRAND PROMENADE
After exploring the Fordyce Bathhouse Museum, we took a stroll on the Grand Promenade which runs behind and parallel to Bathhouse Row. We also stopped and filled up one of our water bottles at one of the many thermal water fountains (the water really was hot). After lunch we took the Hot Springs Mountain Scenic Drive.
GULPHA GORGE CAMPGROUND
While we didn’t camp at the national park’s one 40-site campground, we did go over there and check it out. Gulpha Creek runs alongside the campground and the section next to the campsite is shallow enough that the girls had free rein. Playing in the creek was a welcomed activity to combat the heat and humidity.
HIGHLIGHTS:
Access to Lake Ouachita next to our campsite.
Watching the heat storm.
Playing in the Gulpha Creek at the Gulpha Gorge Campground.
Garvan Woodland Gardens—this is a must-see if going to Hot Springs.
LOWLIGHTS:
While we did like our campsite, we were a good 20 minutes from Hot Springs. If we go to Hot Springs NP again, we would want to plan enough in advance to book a site at Gulpha Gorge Campground to be right next to the park.
We didn’t get to actually try one of the bathhouse (that being the marquee activity). Our kids were not old enough to participate (or enjoy) one of the bathhouse/spa experiences.
Needed to allocate more time at Garvan Woodland Gardens.