National Corvette Museum and on to the house.

4/24 It was 81 degrees when we got up in the morning!! T-shirts and shorts all around. We cleaned out the black and grey water tanks one last time because it would be awhile before we used them again and then headed for the National Corvette Museum.
There were so many cool Corvettes but I didn't want to take pictures of all of them, here are some highlights.

The only Corvette Duntov, the father of the Corvette, ever owned. It was highly modified.

Patrick and Becky work the simulator to change tires and fuel the car in the race pits.

Out of the sink hole. There were quite a few cars that fell into the sink hole this was one of the worst.

Uhmmm...you're going to restore that?

Made me miss my Corvette, a 2002 triple black convertible I bought off the showroom floor. I sold it.

Patrick had fun in it too. He remembers me taking him to the Marseilles reservoir and doing doughnuts and burnouts.

Dogwoods in bloom. The closer we got to Ohio the more barren the trees were and the more things were blooming.

Coming into Cincinnati

We finally made it home. 

The ranch. Its for sale with Becky Coulson at Century 21 Realty in Kenton. $199,999.00

 Since we arrived at home, we renovated an apartment and worked on various projects around the house to clean it up, do repairs and clean it out so that when it sells, we can just move out. I broke my left femur in late May so that holds us up going on another trip until it heals and we have other projects to do until then.
I can't wait to share the next installment of our travels with you!

North and east, it just seems wrong.

4/23 After breakfast and packing up the trailer, we drove all day in beautiful sunshine. It was deceiving because behind coming from the west was a storm that would bring a tornado to Little Rock about an hour from Hot Springs, the day after we left. 

We took the blue route. 

Views of Memphis, TN

We spent the night at a KOA just off the highway. It seemed nice but loud. Then the birds cut in at the break of dawn and drowned out the traffic sounds.

Arkansas Hotsprings

4/21/2014
We spent Monday not doing a whole lot. After several long days of driving it is good to take some time off and catch up on household chores and rest up for a round of sight seeing. I drove around in the rain getting some propane, dropping off mail and going to Wal Mart for new tubes for Patrick's bike and stopping at Scuba and Archery Center. Seems a strange combination but they cover their bases for winter and summer fun and in Arkansas it is legal to spear fish for game fish.

4/22 We headed out for Hot Springs National Park. It happens to be in the middle of the city and back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, it was the place to be to take the waters to cure what was ailing you. The National Park service took the place over after several large fires that destroyed the buildings over the hot springs and regulated that the buildings be built of stone to prevent fires and rot from all the hot water swirling around.

The entrance to the grand walkway where people strolled between baths to take in the clean mountain air and to exercise.

The park service capped all the hot springs to keep them from being contaminated but they left this small one near the base of the grand staircase to show what they looked like in nature.

Another hot spring cascaded out of the mountain, ran under the walkway and into this pool before dropping below. Look close at the small green dot at the bottom of the run and that is a person sitting beside the water. The railing on the left was for stairs running down to the street below.

The Park Service turned Fordyce Bathhouse, the most ornate of the bathhouses into the National Park headquarters and restored it to its formal glory.

Stained glass in the ceiling of the men's bathing area.

The fountain/statue in the middle of the men's bathing area

I loved the extensive use of marble and the intricate hand laid tiles on the floor. In the sitting room, there were intricate patterns that must have taken extensive time to lay and each had precise spacing around it. I marveled at the craftsmanship.

Patrick stands in the carwash shower before they became cool to have in your house.

Men sat in these contraptions and heated their bodies. I always thing of the James Bond movie where Bond locked a guy into one of these things.

The gymnasium where the men worked out. The men and women were separated from each other while in the bathhouses. 

Loved the wooden barbells.

The entrance to the Grand Staircase is flanked by fountains on each side. They spewed forth hot water from the springs. You could see the steam rising off the 100+ degree water.

After touring bathhouse row and Patrick earned his Jr. Ranger badge, we ate lunch and drove around Hot Springs. We ended up at the Hot Springs Mountain Tower. It stands 216 feet high with an outside observation platform and an inside observation platform with a historical time line in it.

There were several other places we wanted to stop but we were running out of time and they were closing down. We ended up stopping for dinner at Bill Clinton's favorite bar-b-que  joint in town, McClard's. It wasn't the best we have eaten but it was still filling and unique. That is what is great about trying new places and not eating in chain restaurants, everything is unique and everyplace is unique.
Finally it was home again to enjoy the evening. Weather reports were forecasting heavy thunderstorms and tornadoes coming into the area and that made up our minds for the next move. We were packing in the morning and making a run towards home.
That had already been decided in ABQ because I needed to work on apartments and some on our house so we were sneaking our way across the country to surprise the folks back home.