Hot Springs

We had been planning a 4 day weekend trip to Charleston, South Carolina, but then a hurricane came and messed up our plans. Fortunately everything we had reserved was fully refundable so no problems. Yogurl still needed to get out of town, though, so we drove up to Hot Springs, Arkansas. We loved it! I think I will start looking for jobs there.

I have long wanted to see the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Texas. Since it was only a little out of the way, we went ahead and stopped off there and looked around. It wouldn't have been worth the trip by itself, but since it only added about 40 minutes to our trip, and there is a delicious bakery where we got breakfast there, it was well worth the time. 

This is in Hot Springs, near downtown. The downtown area is built up around bath houses that were set up to provide spa treatments using the hot natural spring water. This is a little pool of spring water behind us. It was hot! It felt a little hotter than if you filled your bath with nothing but hot water from your tap. No way you would just jump in there. 

This is in a visitor's center run by the national park service. It shows some of the machines they used to use for treating people at the bath houses. 

Probably our favorite part of the trip was visiting the crystal mine a little north of town. Look at all that crystal! 

Here we are headed over to the digging area. They blast in the the crystal mine and then dump heaps of dirt and rock up in this area. You get to actually go through and dig for crystals in the heaps! We found a few pretty nice ones. The kids were just so excited by every rock they found as they dug. 

Even Yogurl got in on the digging action! 

We also took a tour of the open crystal mine in an old 5-ton army truck. This is a crystal seam that we could see down in the mine. It was pretty cool. We also saw turtle eggs in a little pond down in the mine. 

This is the color the crystal is after they mine it and before they clean it with oxalic acid. 

We did lots of playing around in and hiking in nature. Dallas is such a wretched place that we were excited to be someplace so beautiful. 

This is Clark feeding a pygmy goat at a petting zoo and alligator farm. It was pretty lame overall. 

Trying to be brave and feed an emu. Managed to keep all my fingers, so mission accomplished. 

The kids both got to hold a baby alligator! They were very brave, even though I thought they would be scared.

This is one of the only bathhouses still in operation. Yogurl went and got a spa treatment done with the springs water while the rest of us wandered around downtown. 

So I had to include this because apparently Bill Clinton graduated from the high school here in 1965 and then went off to college. I also saw something that said the bathhouses started closing down in 1965 when fewer people started coming for treatment of their syphilis. Coincidence?

Rub a dub dub, three cute kids in a tub.