Day 21

When we arrived at our campground in Hot Springs, AR last night, the guy from the campground who brought us to our site mentioned that it looked like we had a problem with the bearings on one of the wheels of the trailer. He pointed out a lot of black streaks on the one wheel while the other wheel was relatively clean. He said there was probably a bad seal on the hub. He explained that he does RV repairs at the campground, which as it turns out, is pretty standard for the KOA campgrounds we've stayed at. He offered to re-grease the bearing and fix the seal for $30. Having no basis for comparison, I decided to have him do it. He said he'd come by in the morning and take care of it then.

After having the wheel bearing worked on, Josh and I headed into the town of Hot Springs and to the National Park.

In reality, Hot Springs National Park isn't much ... it's more of a museum of the old bath houses than anything else.

We went to the visitor's center, which is actually one of the old bath houses, and has been turned into a museum. We walked through it, watched a short film about the history of the hot springs and that was about all there was to do. There are some hiking trails on the two small mountains that make up the park, but there didn't seem to be any compelling reason to do any of these hikes.

We then walked along the main street where all of the bath houses are and stopped into one of them, which has been converted into a brewery, for a snack and a beer for me. Josh had a root beer float. We then stopped to fill some bottles with water from the hot springs. The National Parks Service has several "filling stations" along the main street where you can fill containers with the natural spring water for free. Due to it's high temperature, the water is drinkable directly from the spring without any filtering or treatment.

After that, we went to a "family fun place", which had go-karts & miniature golf. We took a ride on the go-karts which was a LOT of fun, and then we played a game of miniature golf. We made a quick stop at Wal-Mart for some ice and then headed back to our campground, where we played a few more games of miniature golf.

We made dinner and now we're just relaxing. It was a VERY hot and VERY humid day, so we're both pretty beat. Tomorrow, we drive from Hot Springs, AR to Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. Along the way, we're planning to make a short stop at Graceland. We'll see how that all goes.