I recently read a story about Hot Springs National Park and it reminded me of a funny story for us in regards to that park so I thought I’d share and maybe give you a laugh.

As you probably know already if you’ve been here for awhile, James and I had dreamed of a nomadic lifestyle for over 10 years and in 2020 we were finally able to make that happen. We sold our house and almost everything we owned and we hit the road. Now that we’ve been traveling for almost 4 full years now, we’ve seen a lot of things and we’ve been a lot of places.

I say all that to say — sometimes things get a little mixed up in my mind and I forget where we’ve been.

One of the things we love to do in our travels is visit National Parks. If we’re going to be anywhere near one as we drive through a state, you better believe I’m going to try to fit that in to our itinerary. ;)

Last summer we were heading out to North Carolina from Oklahoma for my company’s annual convention and I was looking to see what we could do along the way. Of course Arkansas is the first state we would get to so I started looking at the map to see what might be cool to stop and see there. As I mentioned, I’m always a sucker for National Parks and I saw Hot Springs NP so I added that to the itinerary.

As we drove into the area I had a weird feeling like we’d been there before. I started recognizing a few things and thinking things looked familiar. Thankfully, when we first started traveling I decided to keep a list of all the places we were visiting. I wanted a record of what we’d seen, what cities we’d been to, and all the fun things we’ve done. So I pulled out my trusty list and…

Hot Springs was there.

We’d been to Hot Springs in 2021 and we’d visited the National Park at that time. 😋

I have no idea how I’d forgotten. We also went to Eureka Springs that year and I think maybe I merged the two of those in my mind and thought we had only been to Eureka Springs but still needed to visit Hot Springs.

We had a pretty good laugh about it — especially once we got into town near the National Park and remembered all of it. How I could have forgotten that is beyond me. lol!

But at least it was along the route for our bigger journey and we hadn’t traveled there specifically and wasted time and money on it. We ended up having a good time anyway and then we continued our drive east. ;)

If you’ve never been to Hot Springs National Park it’s an interesting one for sure. The bulk of it is basically a big hill right in the middle of downtown. You can drive in and take a little scenic drive to see the area — which is beautiful of course! There are hiking trails and campgrounds and you really feel like you’re out in nature and not right near town. It’s crazy! haha!

In the town there is a visitor center and there are also bath houses along the main street. Plus there are numerous souvenir shops, restaurants, and all kinds of fun things to do. It’s definitely a cool place to visit if you haven’t checked this one off your list of National Parks yet. 😄

Have you been there before? What did you think?

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