We grabbed a hotel breakfast, packed up and headed to Hot Springs National Park this morning. We were very close to the park, but the funny thing was I couldn't find it. It was just… a town? That's all there was to it. A few old bath houses were now museums where you could learn about the bustling industry, but that was about it. Not exactly the beauty we have come to expect, but oh, well! The history was still quite cool!
On the way out of town and towards our hotel for the evening, I read out some otherwordly occurances experienced in some of these places. There was some gangster action in the area come prohibition due to the city's lax enforcement. Additionally, there was an army hosptial in the town for quite a while because they considered the hot springs therapeutic. There were lots of things to hear about, but my favorite was that performers on the lawns of some of these old springs sometimes report instruments retuning themselves. What helpful (or hurtful) ghosts!
The rest of the day was pretty cut and dry driving. We had a long day of driving ahead of us, which Dad volunteered to do most of so Mom could work. However, I did take over about 3 hours near the end. That stint ended with a nice reward of Ruby Tuesdays for dinner. In addition, Gideon managed to convince Mom to swing by Dairy Queen for dessert. I certainly wasn't complaining.
The hotel we were staying at, Ancient Lore, is run by a select band of people, so late arrivals mean no one is there to check you in and you must go on your own little quest. I personally chose to believe we were on our way to Mordor. But like all great quests, this one had a major speed bump. The road to the property was closed. This was one of those moments were it became abundantly clear there are two types of people in our family: the men (it's fine, it's fine.
) and the ones with critical thinking skills (what if this is the only road to access the property? What if the road is closed directly in front of the entrance to the property? Where else could we stay?
). No matter how rational our questions are, they are always just worries in the eyes of the men. Eventualities that would never happen
, so there's no need to think about them.
Luckily, in this case, that was true. Dad found a way on Google Maps around the road closure, and we arrived at the property. The room was so cute! But most importantly, we had a Hobbit door!
It was quite late and we were exhausted, so it was straight to bed for me.