The late afternoon sun peeking through the low hills of the Ouachita Mountains washes the colorful facades of historic buildings with golden, softly spun light. The sunbeams are warm and practically glowing as my husband and I walk down the tree-lined sidewalk of Central Avenue, the main thoroughfare in Arkansas' Hot Springs National Park, taking in the turn-of-the-20th-century architecture of Bathhouse Row. Both sides of the street contain an eclectic mix of influences, a fruit-basket turnover of Renaissance Revival, Victorian, Spanish Revival and a few more. Some Greek. Some Mediterranean. Some Italianate. It’s so very European but without the need for a passport.
The allure of the bathhouses brought us back to Hot Springs, where we had briefly visited years before on a quick side trip from Memphis where hubby had been working at the time. Because of the intriguing history of Hot Springs and its mineral-rich, near-mythical hot springs, we chose to return for a getaway that was slower paced and just for us.
Hot Springs National Park is cocooned by the small city of Hot Springs, which is in turn cocooned by the Ouachita. Driving in from Little Rock, the Ouachita stretch scenically for miles across the landscape, their verdant peaks and valleys and blue lakes bathed in sunlight. Much like the range's well-known cousins of the Ozarks to the north, the Ouachita are dwarfish as compared to the venerable Appalachians or Rockies, rising only to around 2,800 feet.
