December 13, 2008

December 13, 2008

Before leaving Hope, AR we drive a few miles into town to see the first home of Hope’s favorite son, Bill Clinton. After a quick photo we make our way northeast to Hot Springs National Park. Hot Springs has to be the oddest of our National Parks. It is an old resort town built around bathhouses fed by a naturally occurring thermal spring. Surprisingly Hot Springs is the oldest unit of the National Park System far older than Yellowstone or Yosemite. Congress made a federal reserve of the area in 1832! Until modern times bathhouses were thought to be therapeutic curing a whole range of ailments. Hence, the government thought it crucial to protect the integrity of the spring. Now, Hot Springs National Park is an anachronism with the NPS stuck owning a string of defunct bathhouses. The Visitor Center is located inside one bathhouse. We give ourselves a self-guided tour of the facility. It is like looking into spa history from the 1920’s. We see a gymnasium and steam boxes I remember from old Three Stooges episodes.

We leave the picturesque Hot Springs area and drive the hour to Little Rock, capital of Arkansas. Our first stop is the Central High School Historic Site. After the Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of public schools, Little Rock was the focal point of Southern resistance. In 1957, nine black students tried to attend Central High, the local white school. Violence erupted and order was restored only when Eisenhower sent in the military. Amazingly stubborn Little Rock closed the schools for the next entire school year rather than submit to federal orders. The Visitor Center is small but is well done and quite an interesting look back at our history.

Our second stop in Little Rock is Bill Clinton’s Presidential Library. The library is housed in a large modern facility but tells virtually nothing about his early life. All the exhibits are about each year of Clinton’s presidency in excruciating detail. To me it was too much of a hard sell that he had a great presidency. Since I am not a Bill and Hillary fan, I am probably not objective. The best part of the Library was the full-size replicas of the Oval Office and Cabinet Room. I also liked the temporary “art” exhibit they had on “chopper” motorcycles. It would have been a lot better visit if we would have met Bill. Surprisingly we almost did. He was at the library this morning.

Since it has been a full day of touring, we decided to spend the night in town.