After breakfast, we made our way back into town to the national park visitors center, where we picked up a ranger-led tour of Bathhouse Row.
On Hot Springs Mountain, here in Hot Springs, Arkansas, there are 47 thermal springs from which mineral water flows at the rate of a half-million gallons per day. For hundreds of years, people have relied on the hot springs for their physical and spiritual healing properties. Around the turn of the last century, Hot Springs hit its heyday, as people seeking relief for various ailments -- from rheumatism to depression -- flocked to the area from around the world and an enormous industry sprung up around the springs. In the early 1900s, beautiful, grand bathhouses were constructed, and, according to their doctors' prescriptions, patients would spend weeks at these facilities, bathing in the mineral water, "quaffing the elixir" (drinking it), napping, enjoying live music performances and taking nature walks.
Eight of these bathhouses remain, and they comprise Bathhouse Row in Hot Springs National Park. Ranger Chelsy took us on a stroll past these buildings and then up onto the hillside behind them, where the 143-degree water flows from the springs. She explained that the water that bubbles to the surface today fell to the earth as rain 4,000 years ago. It seeped into the earth and percolated down through layers of rocks and minerals at the rate of one foot per year. It eventually made its way almost a mile underground, where it was heated by geothermal energy. The earth's own pressure (not volcanic activity, like at Yellowstone) pushed the water back to the surface to emerge from the springs. We were encouraged to sample the spring water trickling from a fountain. In fact, there are several fountains in town where anyone can fill a jug -- or several -- with hot mineral water -- for free -- and take it home to drink. For the last 4,000 years, rocks and minerals deep beneath the earth's surface have been steeping in this water, so it's loaded with calcium, magnesium and potassium, and this is what makes it so special.
Towering over Bathhouse Row is the grand Arlington Hotel, built in 1924. We had lunch in the cool, elegant lobby before venturing back out into the heat.
The thing about most national park campgrounds is that they don't have shower facilities. On this 95-degree day, we were all soaked with sweat and feeling pretty gross. So, after lunch, we lined up at the Buckstaff Bath House for baths in the therapeutic thermal waters. Operating under National Park Service regulations, the Buckstaff is one of two working bath houses on Bath House Row, and the longest continuously operating bath house (open since 1912) in town. I don't know what I had expected -- something resembling a relaxing spa treatment, perhaps, with the tinkle of new-agey music, the gentle murmur of discreet attendants and the heavy scent of aromatherapy essences with names like "euphoria" or "balance."
That is not what we got.
Instead, we all took baths in true sanitarium style -- which is something like a mix of going to the dentist and hanging out in a high school locker room.
Keith and Charlie were whisked away to the men's changing room, while the girls and I rode in a rickety elevator to the second floor, where the women's baths are. The entire floor is tiled in crisp, white, one-inch ceramic tiles, most likely original to the building. The walls are covered in marble and white subway tile. There is no air conditioning, so all the windows were open and most rooms were furnished with huge fans to keep the hot, steamy air circulating. We changed out of our clothes in individual curtained dressing stalls, and then an attendant came along and wrapped us up in sheets. We sat down in stiff chairs near the windows and waited for our turns.
We were each called back to the bathing room separately. I let the girls go first. And when I was called, I was led back into this large, tiled room with ten curtained stalls, each about 5 feet by 8 feet and each housing a huge white cast-iron tub. The room was filled with racket -- from the whir of the fans, the thunder of tubs filling with water and the roar of the jets circulating it, and the calls of the attendants as they hustled clients in and out of the stalls and strained to be heard over the din.
In my stall, there was a stack of white towels, and a single can of Ajax tucked behind the tub. The attendant took my sheet and helped me step into the tub full of 100-degree mineral water, where she left me for 30 minutes. The ancient jet apparatus clamped to the side of the tub looked like a cross between an outboard motor and an industrial-size mixer. But despite the noise and the no-nonsense air about the place, it really was a relaxing soak. I'm not sure if the Buckstaff Bath House is intentionally charming and vintage, or if the place is accidentally stuck in 1955, but this much I know: I am totally getting a cast-iron tub for home.
Toward the end of my soak, the attendant -- a large, lively woman named LaToya -- returned, stood at the side of my tub with a loofa and vigorously scrubbed my arms, legs and back. It occurred to me what a strange job that must be, giving baths to untold numbers of naked tourists.
After my bath, LaToya led me into the hot pack room, where she wrapped my body in towels that she had dunked in the thermal waters. I lay there for 20 minutes on a metal table in this steamy room sweating my ass off and starting to wonder when this treatment was going to end. Then LaToya wrapped my face in a cool towel, and sometime after that I relaxed into it and drifted off.
I awoke a few minutes later, and was led to the steam closet -- literally a metal closet barely big enough for me to sit in -- like some kind of magician's cabinet, with a front door and a lid that closed around my neck so that my head stuck out the top. I sat there and sweated some more while steam rose up from the floor.
The next stop was the sitz bath -- pretty much a huge sink -- or a toilet, almost -- that I sat in to give my bottom a good soak. Why, I don't know.
And the last step was the needle shower, which I had been looking forward to, because my impression was that jets of icy cold water were finally going to offer some relief from the heat. But it was hot water. From the thermal springs, of course. Bummer.
After all that, I went back to my changing stall and put my clothes on. Then I met my freshly bathed family outside the building, in the heat of the afternoon, where we all started sweating again.
Across the street from the bath houses, in the actual town of Hot Springs, there's a motley collection of shops hawking fudge and bath salts and t-shirts, and a couple of galleries, if you can call them that, selling strange, crude, dime-store quality paintings. We did not go inside any of the shops, but I spotted this in a window. It is quite possibly the creepiest artwork I have ever seen:
It pretty much captures the essence of this ... unusual .. town.
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