Our final day of driving and second longest leg (513 miles). We left the hotel around 10 AM CDT for home, but we made 3 detours along the way.
First we drove by Clinton's Presidential library, it seemed imposing and pretty big relative to our preconceived notions of libraries.
Second we drove by the State house in Little Rock. Of all the state houses we saw on this trip, I was able to best capture this one on film.
Third we stopped at the Hot Springs National Park in Hot Springs AR - Unlike the some National Parks (Great Smoky Mountains, Everglades, Grand Canyon, or Yellowstone) According to the nps.gov website : "The hot springs are the primary natural resource of the park, but they have not been preserved in their unaltered state as natural surface phenomena. They have instead been managed to conserve the production of uncontaminated hot water for public use." So it's a horse of a different color. The Hot Springs are in the center of town (as the town grew up around the hot springs, We did get to see and touch a hot spring (yep it's hot, about 140 F, 60 C. , as well as taste and bottle water from a cold spring kind of salty, but still refreshing. It was worth the stop, and we probably could have spent a whole day there doing an auto tour, visiting the observation tower, or even a short hike.
Texas state line - lamest state line sign.
enroute US 59 - Driving along this route Saturday evening we discovered a disturbing trend, towns small enough for 59 to go straight through didn't have any food facilities one would want to stop at. Towns and cities that were potentially big enough to have places to eat, 59 would bypass around, leaving us bemused and hungry.
Megan Milestones:
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•Third National Park (Hot Springs)
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•Fourth NP Passport Stamp
Saturday, September 8, 2007
