Hot Springs Hike

It started out as a grueling hike up the steep Dead Chiefs Trail. Now we were descending down the other side of the mountain on Hot Springs Mountain Trail.

This wasn't quite wilderness, for our switch backing path took us across a paved road that climbed up to the mountain ridge and then (so the map told us) to an overlook on North Mountain. But the air was fresh, and the quiet forest enveloped us so that it felt like we had left our world far away.

After Hot Springs Trail, you come to Dogwood Trail. If you follow this long enough, first the upper loop and then the lower, you reapproach the city from the northeast. So after a while, the solitude of the forest receded and the sounds of hubbub got louder until finally we heard the honking of cars in traffic and the sound of children laughing and the splash of people swimming in a pool.

The path narrowed and the sounds of the city grew. The path narrowed further, and we found ourselves walking on a wooden walkway lined with hoses and cords and mops and buckets. The trail had deposited us smack into a maintenance corner of the Arlington Hotel and Spa outside swimming pool. The floor of the deck surrounding the pool was level with our faces, and we could see kids in the water and other people sunning themselves. We wondered if any of them was aware of the escape opportunity lying just beyond their noses.

The walkway became a bridge which jutted out from the hillside and entered the third floor of the hotel from the rear. We opened the doors and walked in, admiring the plush carpeting and gentle lights of the hallway.

This is what a fancy hotel should be like, I mumbled, thinking how it so put to shame the cookie cutter luxury hotels so common today.

We gazed into the rooms as we walked by, doors open to the halls by the cleaning staff. And I suppose the both of us thought for a moment about how those rooms differed from our motel room a half-mile up Park Avenue. And I suppose further that together we both realized that although this was what a fancy hotel should be like, that we preferred the sincerity of the place where we had spent the night before.

We took the elevator down to the hotel lobby. We walked past people coming and going. We walked past people eating and drinking. And we walked out onto the verandah past people standing and waiting and sitting and relaxing. Then we set out to find a place to eat.

Ooh, ice cream for lunch! a girl said to her father as he walked up with hand-scooped ice cream cones in hand.

Yes, he said. As I said yesterday, meals for today: breakfast, ice cream, and linner!

We had found the place we were looking for.

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Hot Springs National Park
Hot Springs, Arkansas USA

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