Not bright enough?

How bright does one have to be??? The other lady ran the stoplight. Poor "Little Miss Sunshine."

Thank goodness I had my seatbelt on. I was doing donuts in the middle of Central Avenue!

Lights...camera...action!

And I am happy that I am not hurt and I did not run this red light!

Hiking again

We are on the trail again after a long hiking break! We crossed the bridge to a two mile hike at Lake Catherine State Park.

We chose the Waterfall Hike the shortest of the three available. Since Leon hiked it last week we took the reverse route. The leaves are beginning to change and fluttered to the ground as we walked along. There were many visitors in the adjacent campground and the bright sun in the cool morning air made us wish we were one of the group. But one step at a time!

On the way home we stopped at Gilligan's overlooking a windy Lake Hamilton for our second breakfast and decided to call it lunch. The food really tasted good after the exercise. Now I will go drag some trees into the neighbor's woods that I cut yesterday in my fast disappearing woods while Leon watches his eyelids while the football game plays.

Stu and Joann Visit

Stu and Joann, two of our RV'ing friends, stopped for a visit during their trip from Minnesota back to Texas. We did our best to show Joann a bit of history on her first visit. We approached the historic district with a walk down the promenade behind bathhouse row.

Here we descended to the open hot water spring in the national park. Joann found the hot water just a little too much at 140 degrees. It is cooled in the bathhouses but not in this open spring.

We took a detour into the Arlington Hotel, one of the oldest in Hot Springs. I was surprised to find Al Capone's car on display in the lobby. He visited Hot Springs often and stayed at the Arlington. The car was made for protection with 1" thick windows. The back window let down so that the occupants could shoot out the back. He lived a much calmer life while visiting Arkansas.

The fall weather has arrived with the highs in the 60s and 70s and we enjoyed a stroll down bathhouse row. Photography appears to be one of Stu's hobbies.

Only one of the bathhouses is operating as they did in the past when "Hot Springs bathed the world."

Another bathhouse is the national park visitor's center and provides an indepth look at what life was like in past decades on bathhouse row. Leon and Joann try out two of the rockers that were quite plentiful throughout the bathhouses.

This is the men's bathing hall which has lots of tile and marble surrounding the statue in the center of the room. Here men could sit and visit in a group before going for individual baths, steam cabinets, sitz baths, massages, and all sorts of "modern" treatments that would cure arthritis, syphillis, and a variety of other ailments.


There is a magnificent stained glass skylight above the statue.

Leon and Stu got along as fabulously as Joann and I always have. We hope this is only the first of many visits from these two. We went down town one night and stopped in the old Ohio Club before window shopping along Central Avenue. Leon, Stu and Joann did a couple of the hikes at Lake Catherine State Park but there is much more to do!