May 28, 2021 Day 41: Hot Springs national park , AK 温泉国家公园

Joy Yang
Jun 4, 2021
2 min read

This random town in Arkansas is known for its water. Hot Springs National Park is the only national park that is required to give away its water - water warmed by geothermal forces for 4000 years in the earth before rising out of the ground. There are faucets in the town for public use. Some people bring enormous plastic containers to fill water lasting months. One lady said she had been collecting the water for nine years since she lived there, and was helping her friend who drove fifteen hours for the water. Later, our waitress said that she tasted the water and moved there for that reason.

I thought the water was okay. Tasted like normal mineral water. A park ranger told us about the algae which survive in the over 100 degree Fahrenheit water.

We hiked a bit, then went around town to a wax museum. This was mostly creepy. There were famous people who didn’t look a lick like the real-life version, but had slick faces and somehow were all slightly shorter than average. Elvis and Obama and others I mostly didn’t recognize besides Martin Luther King Jr. They had a fairy tale area where in my opinion unintentionally made innocent childhood fantasies into life-sized statues that should not exist. The little dwarves from Snow White were the only ones that resembled what they were supposed to be like, and the wax eye sockets will stay with me forever.

An old man named George drove a shuttle for us. He owned the RV park for 36 years, after it was first established in 1967. They had to continuously make adjustments because RVs had gotten longer since they started. His son drove us back - they had bought the site when he was 12. This site was the nicest we had stayed at - trash cans at every camper site so we didn’t need to look for the dumpsters on the map and lug the trash there, Wi-Fi was actually strong, and of course the random ice cream truck. （There was an ice cream van playing tinkling music at our campsite after we arrived. Lots of bright lights, dusky warm place. ）

Later, we barbequed chopped bell peppers and brussel sprouts on a fire (running out of things to eat by this point.) They tasted very good.