A Perfect Summer Day

 I took the kids to a water slide right over the boarder in Missouri today. It was in someone's yard and they could go down as many times as they wanted for an hour. They ran up the hill each time they went down, ready for more. I bet they went down the slide twenty times! They didn't want to leave, but we did. On the way home, we stopped at Short Stop Grill which is pretty much a gas station with food and huge ice cream cones. The girls all got the baby sized cones and Jack got a small. He dumped it into a cup before I snapped a picture of it, though. Some friends of ours went with us and all the kids had such a blast. It was in the upper 90s--a perfect summer day for swimming and ice cream

 Running up for more!

 They were cold after eating ice cream so they came outside to sit in the sun!

Crater of Diamonds State Park

Today, we got up early and headed to the Crater of Diamonds State park to search for diamonds. After such a great day searching for quartz yesterday, today was a bit of a let down. We didn't find much but dirt--and a few cool rocks. But it was an experience and the kids did enjoy it for a few hours before it got way to hot! After lunch at the Cafe, we said good-bye to the Wakefields and we headed North to Bentonville and they headed south to Houston.

Driving back to Bentonville

Hot Springs Mountain View

After walking downtown, we drove up the mountain to see the view of it. It was very pretty!

Hot Springs, AR

After eating lunch, we went to downtown Hot Springs to check out Bathhouse row. Hot Springs is a city on the edge of a mountain and has numerous natural hot springs. Rain water travels down into the  earth and heats up. Then, it makes it way back up to the earth very quickly (like 100 years) though cracks and fault lines and that is why it is still hot at the surface (143*). The rains that falls today, will come back up to the springs in the next century. In the early 1900s, many bathhouses popped up allowing people to bathe. They believed the natural springs had a healing power and people came from all over the country to take a bath.  There were the early spas and also physical therapy, beauty salons and gyms. We toured an old bathhouse that is now part of a museum to see how they were organized. There are many bathhouses that are still running today. Downtown Hot Springs had water spouts that bring the unfiltered water from the springs up for people to fill their bottles. While we were filling up our bottles to drink, we saw many local people filling up multiple jugs to take home. I doubt they sell many cases of bottled water at the local Walmart! There were mostly hot water (which we tasted), but we were able to walk to one of the two cold water springs in the city and fill our bottles. The water was really good!

Hot Springs is known for the founder of spring baseball. Many teams traveled here for spring training, to hike the mountain for exercise and bathe in the bathhouses. We followed the baseball tour as best as we could downtown. 

Springs

bathhouse row

The kids liked the old elevator in the museum

I didn't take many pictures inside the old bathhouse, but this is one Sarah took. It was very interesting to see the old "spa". This is a shower with tons of shower heads.