Friday, June 26, 2009

Post #2 - Downtown Hot Springs - Bath House Row

The next day, Saturday, May 23rd we went downtown and walked around. They say Hot Springs is America's First Resort city and one of the South's most popular family vacation and convention spots. Check this site out for information on Hot Springs. Rather than me type all this stuff out, check on the underlined link above and read what you are interested in. Click on the Fordyce Bath House link below to read about the bath house we went in. Pretty interesting. There is a bunch of bath houses on "Bath House Row" (which is on main street) but as far as we could tell, there is only one working one now. There are working bath places in some of the hotels like the Arlington Hotel which has alot of history to it. If you go to the left hand column at the hotel site, you can click on the "About the Arlington" an read about it. I'll be mentioning the Arlington in my next post also. It may surprise some of you what that post will be about. But this hotel is a beautiful building. You can see the building in the background when you go in to the Fordyce Bath House site. In the old days, people would pay good money during that time frame to go in and have somebody else bathe them. At this link it tells about the bath house which we toured in. Also, the Fordyce is the Hot Springs National Park Visitor Center. Click here to see what the steps to a great bathing experience is. Here is some pictures of my own:
#1) The four of us out in the wooden rocking chairs on the porch of the Fordyce Bath House. #2) Dave standing in front of the Ozark Bath House. He said "he was going to go in and make sure they had the appropriate license to have a destructive device" on their premises. Of course he was joking, but that is the federal investigator coming out in him. #3) Pamela and Nate sitting waiting for Dave to come back from the potty room. #4) One of the shower type things they used in the bath house. #5) One of the bathtubs, kind of dirty looking we thought. #6) Another shower type thing? #7) There was a label that said these hoses were used on women when they wanted a deuche,....woooeeeeeee!. #8) The steam cabinets. If you ever watched the "I Love Lucy" episode you could see her one. If I remember correctly, she was really hot and sweaty. #9) An information plaque telling about the steam cabinets. You may double click on it and be able to read it. Not sure. #10) A fountain on the men's side of the bath house. #11) Stained glass in the ceiling above the fountain. Pretty cool looking I thought. #12) The main street looking down a bit and #13) The main street looking up a little.















































































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