Adventures in Forgetfulness
Tales of a visit to Hot Springs National Park. Again.
I recently read a story about Hot Springs National Park, and it reminded me of a funny one about us and that park, so I thought I’d share and maybe give you a laugh. 😂
One of the things we love to do in our travels is visit National Parks. If we’re going to be anywhere near one as we drive through a state, you better believe I’m going to try to fit that in to our itinerary.
A couple of summers ago, we were heading from Oklahoma to North Carolina for my company’s annual convention, and I was looking to see what we could do along the way. Of course, Arkansas is the first state we would go through, so I started looking at the map to see what might be worth stopping to see there. Since I’m always a sucker for National Parks and I saw Hot Springs NP, I added that to the list.
Now that we’ve been traveling for almost five full years, we’ve seen a lot of things, and we’ve been a lot of places, and sometimes things get a little mixed up in my mind, and I forget where we’ve been. As we drove into the area, I had a weird feeling like we’d been there before. And this was way more than déjà vu! Haha! I started recognizing a few things and thinking things looked familiar.
Thankfully, when we first started traveling, I decided to keep a list of all the places we were visiting. I wanted a record of what we’d seen, what cities we’d been to, and all the fun things we’d done. So I pulled out my trusty list and…
Hot Springs was there!
We’d been to Hot Springs in 2021 and visited the National Park then. 🙃
I have no idea how I’d forgotten. We also went to Eureka Springs that year, and I think I merged the two in my mind and thought we had only been to Eureka Springs, even though we still needed to visit Hot Springs.
We had a pretty good laugh about it — especially once we got into town near the National Park and remembered all of it. How I could have forgotten it all is beyond me. Lol!
But at least it was along the route of our bigger journey, and we hadn’t traveled there specifically, wasting time and money. We ended up having a good time anyway, before continuing our drive east.
Since we’re on the topic, let me tell you a little about the area.
If you’ve never been to Hot Springs National Park, it’s an interesting one for sure. The bulk of it is a big hill right in the middle of downtown. You can drive in and take a little scenic drive to see the area, which is beautiful, of course! There are hiking trails and campgrounds, and you really feel like you’re out in nature, not right near town. It’s crazy!
In the town, there is a visitor center, and of course, there are also bathhouses along the main street so that you can take a dip in the hot springs. Plus, there are numerous souvenir shops, restaurants, and all kinds of fun things to do along the main street in town. It’s definitely a cool place to visit if you haven’t checked this one off your list of National Parks yet.
Have you been there before? What did you think?