From: John Freeman [johnfree@pacbell.net]

Sent: Monday, November 13, 2000 11:06 PM

Subject: Clinton Country

 

 

Saturday Oct 27� Bolivar TN - Hot Spring AK

 

Bolivar is named for the Liberator, Simon Bolivar, of whom there are statues in front of City Hall and in the library (where I was reading e-mail again).� I have no idea what is the connection between this swampy little town and "The Liberator of Five Countries", and didn't have the mental energy to ask the librarians, so it will remain a mystery.

 

It is hot and flat.� I drive the 60-ish miles to the outskirts of Memphis, which is even more hot and flat.� I decide that I might as well get a little more hot and flat as long as I'm in it, so instead of just blasting across the mighty Mississippi on the I-40 interstate bridge, I instead to take a left on US 11 and do a fifty mile jaunt down the eastern side of the river into the state of Mississippi, so I can soak up a bit more of the Delta thing and cross the Mississippi River at 50 mph on a more intimate bridge rather than some giant concrete freeway span at 70 mph.

 

What a great plan.� My spirits rose almost immediately after I got off the freeway.� The drive was fun, with additional unexpected interest because it turns out that there are HUGE casinos springing up in little podunk towns along the river down here in the state of Mississippi.� Not a good thing or a happy thing to see, but kind of interesting nonetheless...

 

Oh yeah, in the far 'burbs of Memphis was a living, still-in-business drive-in movie theater - two theaters in fact, back to back with a shared concession stand in the middle.� Bring 'em back I say!

 

I turn right about 12 miles before Clarksdale, Miss, of which I think there is a famous blues song to the effect of "going down to Clarksdale"...� I crossed the river on a cozy little two lane steel girder bridge into the town of Helena, Arkansas, which styles itself as the home of the Delta blues.� The river itself looked pretty pitiful today; about a third of its width was a big sand bar.�� It looked bigger when I crossed its tributary the Ohio back in Pittsburgh, a thousand miles upstream!

 

The drive through the pleasant, slow-movin' bottomlands of eastern Arkansas was nice but slow since the roads weren't too good.� There was nothing on my maps worth stopping for, so I basically drove at a leisurely pace all day.� Eventually the land started getting more hilly and less swampy.� Eventually I ended up in Hot Springs, AK, childhood home of President Bill Clinton, and home of Hot Springs National Park.

 

I score big time by getting a decent room right downtown, with the National Park right across the road.�

 

This place turns out to super-great!�

 

When Jefferson bought the Louisiana Territories from the poor broke Frenchies back in 1803, these springs were already known.� He sent surveyors to check it out, and they became so famous that they were set aside as federal property all the way back in 1832!� 850K gallons of water at 143 degrees(!) come out of the ground every day.� They say this water takes 4000 years to cycle from runoff to 8,000 feet underground to shooting back to the surface.� It's among the most sterile water known in the world, and makes a heckuva hot tub!

 

The hot water is all collected in one place and distributed to various bathhouses and hotels under federal control.� Kind of a weird setup.�

 

After walking up the Lookout Peak for a cloudy sunset I got a park brochure, from which I was able to find the Libbey Memorial Physical Medicine Center and Health Spa, where I soaked myself to a prune until closong time.� It was a GREAT spa.� There were hot tubs, cold tubs, really hot tubs, a bubbler thing, a pool, a hot pool, an outside patio, a steam room and what they called a "dry steam room", which is of course a sauna.� It wasn't perfect, it had seen a lot of wear and tear and some of the bubbler motors had the un-relaxing sound of jet planes taking off, but the tools to fulfill most of my hydro-therapeutic fantasies were in place and at my service!

 

There are at least three places around town where public spigots are set up so citizens may have as much of this hot water as they can carry off.� There's even an ever-running water fountain, which goes to show you that your federal government does have a sense of humor, since it is pretty hard to drink water at 130 degrees!

 

I filled up every plastic bottle that I have accumulated in five weeks (quite a few!), and also one of those 2 1/2 gallon collapsible plastic water cubes I bought for the still-to-come desert portion of this trip.� The hot water softened up the plastic, so that when I carried it back to the truck it became a water sphere instead of a water cube, and has been rolling around the back of the truck ever since. :)

 

For everyone's future reference, this is a really fine place to visit that I completely recommend.� I think the big fancy hotels with their own (federally regulated :) spas are a reasonable 0-ish/night, but I managed to find a perfectly comfortable hovel for , only a block and a half from the Arlington Hotel, which looked to be the class of the group to me -- I glimpsed its spa on the hill behind the hotel, and it looked swank.� It even had a pretty sweet Lawrence Welk dance party thing going on in the lobby bar!� Saturday night, y'know...

 

 

Sunday Oct 28� Hot Spring AK - Ouachita Mountains -� Clayton AK

 

Walked downtown for breakfast (crowded, but hey, it's Sunday morning), then toured the park some more.

 

The showpiece of the park is "Bathhouse Row", which is a row of eight beautiful turn of the century bathhouses that have been shut down for decades except for two - one is still a working bathhouse, and the other is restored to be the Park headquarters and a Park Service exhibit.� The working bath house was closed while I was there (Sat night and Sun), but the exhibit bath house is just a delightful place.� I read a novel recently set in the late 1800's that detailed the weird diets and Victorian control freak health regimens that were all the rage then, and the health hardware in this building fit right in.� If you are at all into massage you would find it fascinating.� I got some pix, but my camera batteries died prematurely.

 

As with Asheville, NC, this place looks like a place I could live (but maybe I'm being delusional).

 

This is the start of the Ouachita Mountains (pronounced "Washitah"), which extend well into eastern Oklahoma.� The are very beautiful -- mostly oaks, rather than the maples and birches of the eastern forests, so they aren't particularly colorful, but they're still pretty darned scenic.� I planned to take the ridge road, but the weather got ever more overcast, to the point where I had almost no visibility, so I went down to the valley for a while, then went back up to the ridge whe it cleared for a nice hike.�

 

The forest was lovely and drippy and quiet.� There's a historical marker that says I am walking on the Old Military Road, which must have been a busy place back in the middle 1800's.� It connected Fort Smith in the north and Fort Towson in the south, and was built to help the army keep the Choctaws in line.� The Choctaws had been evicted from the southeast (Florida?), and were pretty pissed off about it.� The sign said that U.S. Grant, Sam Houston, Andrew Jackson and other notables I don't remember traveled this very road (over this very spot!), on various errands involving Texas and fighting the Mexicans -- apparently this was the best way from Texas to Washington DC at that point.� I stood there and kinda grooved on the whole thing... :)

 

I returned to the truck, and before you know it, whoops, it's raining, almost dark, and I'm heading into country that looks pretty bleak on the map.� And in fact it is pretty bleak, but I found a little motel in a little town that turned out to be just fine.� It was right across the street from the Country K Restaurant.� I wanted to tell my waitress about the SF band called the Kuntry K's, but I was afraid she wouldn't be amused and I would be in trouble in a strange, strange land.

 

In between downpours it's quite pleasant here in Clayton Oklahoma -- the TV sucks, but I can leave my door wide open and nobody even walks past.� It's very dark (i.e. no security lights) and quiet.