D is ALWAYS very vocal about the fact that while we do travel a lot with our kids, and have fun lasting memories, that we go on family trips NOT a vacation. Apparently, a vacation implies that you have a relaxing time and enjoy a slower life style. We have discovered with kids that this is just not possible. Kids have endless energy and always want to do something. Also, having to constantly get on to them for fighting and messing with each other is not fun. My kids are getting older and it is less of a problem than it was, but it still is a problem and on a two week trip even my older daughter, who is almost 16 and normally has endless patience, had her moments with her siblings. Our total mileage was a little over 2600 miles in two weeks. That is a lot of ...family togetherness in the car. However, this trip was considerably more tolerable than the over 3200 mile trip of 2016, all thanks to the new camper and its amenities.
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| Maisy on travel days. |
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| We stopped for lunch anywhere we could park. It was great! |
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| Everyone enjoyed the break. |
Our first stop was Hot Springs, AR. We stayed at Lake Catherine State Park. The park was nice and only a few miles from the national park. Unfortunately, it was here we realized that our days would have to begin insanely early on our trip. Our wonderful antisocial dog deemed it necessary that we get up to walk her by 6am everyday before everyone else woke up. I actually enjoyed this. It was nice to watch the sunrise and have some quiet time before the rest of the park was up. We even saw deer and other wild life that early; which would have been wonderful if we weren't with a dog who completely flips out at anything that moves. D got dragged around quite a lot on this trip. I pretty much gave up trying to walk her because I can't control her very well when she gets excited so D pretty much was the official dog person on this trip. The kids, apparently, would have "kid talk time" while were on the dog walk and it became their habit on this trip to get up after we left and make up their beds, watch tv (which unless we had cable hook ups was pretty much a constant playing of Duck Dynasty dvds), and have "kid talk time'. I have no idea what they talked about, but they got up willingly and without complaint so I was good with it. This early start time also enabled us to leave fairly early on exploring days and arrive at places when they opened which allowed us to find parking and have less people around for a couple of hours.
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| Our spot at Lake Catherine State Park. |
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| We even had our own dock! |
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| Our early morning walks with our antisocial dog |
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| The dog blessed us with the ability to see beautiful, peaceful sunrises. (lemons into lemonade right?) |
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| We only walked this for a little bit and then embarked on a more challenging hike. |
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| There were lots of paved stairs on this trail. |
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| I thought it was neat that they had a chess area built in to the stone table. |
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| A view of the bath houses below. |
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| The trail name should have let me know that it was not nice paved stairs the whole way up. |
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| We had nice loose gravel to slip on all the way up the super steep incline. |
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| The view from the top made the hike worthwhile. |
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| We were higher than the birds! |
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| Interesting photo ops |
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| They had gorgeous stained glass throughout. |
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| Old steam room...or ancient torture device? |
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| Rehabilitation gym. Apparently in the 1920's rehab was a very active event! |
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| Awesome lunch at Superior Bath House. |
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| D wasn't too sure about the warm water. |
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| Tons of people come to fill bottles from the free spout. |
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| Sounded awesome, but unfortunately had not opened yet. |
Our first day exploring, we went to Hot Springs National Park. Hot Springs is unique for a National Park because it is in the middle of a city. The park also has a spigot where the spring water comes up that they allow you to fill your containers up for free whenever you want. People were always there filling up gallons and gallons of water. We filled our water bottles up before we left and the water was good, but it took about 3 hours before it was cool enough to drink. We wished we would have brought a tea bag because it would make great hot tea. I was afraid it would melt the plastic water bottles, but they endured the 140 degree water. We hike a trail called Dead Chief Trail. I know why. It is only half a mile, but it is straight up the side of a mountain. It was intense, but we did it and the view from the top was amazing. We averaged about 6 miles or so of walking on our non-travel days. The getting up so early and all the walking made us sleep well at night! After our hike, we toured the bath houses, which were essentially early 1900's spas. There was beautiful stained glass in several areas. One bath house was converted to a brewery that uses the spring water to make homemade beer and root beer. The kids and I had the root beer which was good and D ordered a jalapeno craft beer; both were good. However, the lunch we ordered was absolutely delicious!
The next day, we opted to explore the park we were staying in. They had a 3.5 mile trail we were going to hike to a waterfall. We made it about 2 miles in before we had to turn back. They do not believe in mowing wild areas in Arkansas and we lost the trail in the armpit high grass so we turned back and took the more touristy paved trail to the waterfall that was only 0.5 miles. The waterfall was pretty, but all the ticks we picked up from the initial trail took us over a week to completely rid ourselves of. After our hike, we decided to rent a kayak and pedal boat and spend some time on the lake. The kids loved it. My legs almost died after all the hiking, walking the dog and then trying to pedal the girls and I around for an hour. D, of course. was not partial to the lake since he has a feud with the sun and tries to avoid it whenever humanly possible.
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| The only time on our whole trip we were able to have a fire and smores. |
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| The beginning of the infamous hike. |
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| The trail to the waterfall that was nice and had NO tall grass. |
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| The waterfall. |
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| I even climbed to the top of the waterfall to take a pic. |
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| My little captain loved roaming the lake on the pedal boat. |
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| I had a lot of fun too! I grew up being a water rat. |
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| T had fun, but probably would have had more fun if he was with someone who enjoyed being on the water! |
Our next stop is another Arkansas State Park. The mid west has been completely devastated by rain and severe weather, but so far we have missed all the bad weather and had nice pleasant days on our trip.
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