We walked around some of the trails in this lovely recreation area including the one down to the springhead itself. Even though we know this area is in the middle of a drought we were amazed by the amount of water in these springs and creeks. Then I remembered that this was not recent water we saw gushing forth but rather water that has sometimes spent thousands of years percolating down through the cracks and fissures in the stone. We had been told that in some cases the water can be as much as 4,000 years old! Not only do some of these places smell old, I can attest that they actually taste old too!
Our goal was to go directly west from Blanchard Caverns to Harrison and the beginnings of Scenic Byway 7, but we decided to continue in this Buffalo River Wilderness area for a day or two. Off we went west-northwest on Hwy. 14 toward the ghost town of Rush and a little campground there. This was an interesting area with lots of foundations and walls made of the local sandstone. It was a large zinc carbonate mining area from the 1880’s until about 1920. The heydays were during WW1 when there was a great demand for zinc as it was used in the smelting of brass and bronze for shell casings and weapons. Upwards of 5,000 people called these gulches and gullies home for a few years, then they left as quickly as they had come. Personally, I found the scenery along Highway 14 a whole lot more to my liking. So I asked Cokie to take few shots of those kinds of things rather than the falling down stuff.
It was onward on Hwy.14 north to Yellville then westward as we worked our way to Harrison and Scenic Highway 7, “the heart of the Arkansas Ozarks”. This is a very steep, winding, gorgeous, north-south running road that entertained us mile after mile after mile. Kae loves to drive these rural, hill country roller coasters but I have to tell you, my tummy sometimes just doesn’t agree! We found fun, funny places like Dogpatch and Booger Hollow and even the “Grand Canyon of the Ozarks” just south of Jasper. This was truly the best of the Ozarks country vistas. It was here that the fall colors were finally starting to show too!
We camped at Lake Dardanelle near Russellville on the Arkansas River for two or three days then continued our trek down the road to famous Hot Springs, Arkansas, childhood home of President William Jefferson Clinton.
We parked out in the Gulpha Gulch Campground for about a week so we would have plenty of time to explore and ‘soak up’ the place. This has got to be one of the best and the most unique of the National Parks that we have seen so far. For one thing I could walk all over the place with the gals; most unusual for a National Park, but then the whole living town is the park! This area was originally set aside by the Federal Government as a reservation in 1832 to preserve the hot springs and natural beauty of the area. So this year the National Park Service celebrated 175 years of responsibility to ‘protect and preserve’ this national treasure!
Under that mandate to protect and preserve, the Park Service began a massive restoration project, in 2004, of several of the remaining elegant bathhouses on Bath House Row. These beauties were built during the hey day of Hot Springs - 1880 to 1950 - then modern medical discoveries made “taking the waters” a thing of the past. By1985 there was only one bath house still open, the Buckstaff. The Ladies simply had to stop at the Buckstaff for a couple of hours to do the hot mineral water bath routine and fill all of our jugs with this “wondrous elixir” drawn straight from the bowels of the earth and served at various public fountains in the heart of town. (Dang fine water when it cools down from 143 degrees, otherwise I discovered that it is a real nose blisterer!)
The National Park Visitors Center is housed in the completely restored Fordyce Bathhouse. In 1915, when it opened, the Fordyce was touted as the best that Hot Springs had to offer. Now you can tour all four floors and see it in its original splendor. Empty since 1962 it was reopened in1989 with all of the women’s and part of the men’s side outfitted with the furnishings and equipment of the time: steam cabinets, tubs, massage tables, sitz tubs, the Hubbard Tub, hydro-therapy equipment, billiard table, piano, marble benches, stained glass ceilings, marble and tile work. It really is quite elegant and Cokie had so much fun photographing all of it.
What makes this water hot? Well, this is NOT a volcanic region. The water is heated by a different process. Rainfall percolates down through the cracks and fissures in the outcroppings of chert and Novaculite. The water is conducted deep into the earth; estimates are as deep as 8,000 feet. As it descends it is heated by increasingly hotter rocks, about 4 degrees every 300 feet. Eventually the water encounters faults and cracks leading back up to the lower west slope of Hot Springs Mountain where it surfaces.
One day we took a drive up one of the most incredibly twisted, switched-backed, doubled-up, narrow, one-way roads I had ever been on, just to see the Hot Springs Mountain Tower. This is a 261 foot platform that Cokie wanted to use for vista photos of the area. Personally I hate heights, so I dozed and they observed; works for me!
We were actually killing a few days waiting for mail so we took off for some R&R in the forest west of Hot Springs to spend time in the quietude of Lake Ouachita (Ha! Bet you tried to pronounce it with a Mexican flare, huh? Well, you ain’t from here, are yall? It is Lake Wash-i-ta!). Our expectations were more than fulfilled. This is a lovely, large lake with oodles of bays and fjords, campgrounds and hiking trails. We spent two weeks just mellowing in the cooler weather, watching the changing season. Finally I could feel, see and smell the fall of this beautiful year. The Ladies met a neat local gal named Maria who stopped to talk about the wonderful Pod and her dream of taking off on the open road. She turned out to be lots of fun for hikes, firewood and information on the area. It’s always so much fun to meet these nice folks along the way. We get to share our adventures and experiences, they share their dreams and I get extra hugs. Life is great!
Westward, ever westward! It’s off to Oklahoma and the way open road.
1 comment:
Hi Chicas!
Don't tell me you're going to bypass Eureka Springs! You'll be so sorry. Not only is it beautiful, it's also like encountering a bit of Berkeley-mentality in the midst of Arkansas. I lived there five very happy years, still have family and friends there.
Do anything you can to make it there.
Rebecca (friend of Jan and Katherine's)
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