On the road again - ONE LAST TIME!

We are on I-57 travelling through central Illinois right at this moment.  This was the quickest we have packed up and rolled out of a campsite in the whole month we've been gone!  Yes, as Henry said in his last post, we are so ready to be home.  Only 2 1/2 hours to go! 

I've got to admit, Arkansas is one of those states I really never gave any attention to.  Other than knowing that Bill Clinton was from there, I didn't know anything else about it.  But, I've got to tell you, it is lovely there.  The large lakes, mountains, and general landscape was remarkable.  I'm so glad we headed through there on our way home.  Hot Springs was naturally beautiful and we learned so much about the process of how the water goes through the mountains into fissures and comes back up to the surface as hot, naturally purified water.  Is it still sterile after we put our feet into it? 

The water comes out of the springs at an average temperature of 143 degrees.  It was very HOT!  Henry (my husband) built up to sticking his leg in and touching the bottom of the pool.  He said it still hurt a few hours later.  Brock stuck his whole arm in and Seth plunged in his whole leg also.  Why must men do these feats of endurance?  I'd love them regardless! 

We did a DUCK tour (the amphibious vehicles built in WWII) of the town of Hot Springs and Hamilton Lake.  How fun to have a huge lake named for us.  Too bad it's in Arkansas!

Hot Springs was a hot spot for gansters (not gangstas as my kids like to say!) in the 1920's & 30's. They would come here to relax, gamble & party.  We learned of tunnels in the hotels where Al Capone would go directly from his hotel to the casinos.  This was a home on Hamilton Lake where the mob would congregate and, whenever the authorities came, they would slip out through a secret tunnel in the house to this outlet & take speedboats away.  Interesting stuff! 

One of the bath houses on "bath house row" (on the main street in the valley between 2 mountains where the hot springs naturally occur) still operates in the same manner as an old time bath house.  A couple more are currently spas and the rest are just historic buildings now.  The most opulent of all the bath houses is now operated as Hot Springs National Park Museum.  Here we are pretending what it might have been to be guests here close to 100 years ago.

Oh, I forgot to mention that they gave all of us these duck quackers on the Duck tour; they have all since been confiscated by me and Henry. 

We ended our day in Hot Springs with a trip to the local go-cart/putt-putt place that every tourist town has.  It was a nice one and we had a lot of fun.

Even though we were worried we wouldn't be able to enjoy our stops on the way home (because of being so anxious to just be home), we sure did!  Yesterday was a driving day but our highlight was stopping by Lambert's Cafe in Sikeston, MO for lunch.  They are known as "Home of the Throwed Rolls" and was made famous on the Travel Channel as one of the best places to pig out!  So, it is like an oversized Cracker Barrel with signs and license plates all over the walls.  A guy rotates around the different corners of the huge room and throws rolls to patrons with their hands up all over the room.  So much fun!!!  We all did pretty well catching the delicious, yeasty, HOT rolls!  http://www.throwedrolls.com/  Delicious home cookin'!

Henry just leaned over to me and said, "I'm really glad we did this."  So am I.