Hot Springs

Friday morning I woke up with one very red (dare I say pink?) eye. My stress manifests in my eyes, and I thought I might have pink eye, but it wasn’t super itchy so I wasn’t sure. We walked to the Walgreens by our hotel and grabbed some eye drops and I thought what better place to go with a bum eye than to some therapeutic hot springs, right? 😬 

We filled up our water bottle with some piping hot water, then checked out the National Park shop and info center. 

There used to be 8 bathhouses on Bathhouse Row, but now only 2 operate. 2 are National Park buildings, and the others are hotel/restaurants or being renovated. Also, the eye drops helped my eye immediately, so I was pretty sure it wasn’t pink eye. 

We decided on Quapaw Baths and Spa, and since we didn’t have an appointment (that place was busy!) we settled for the public thermal pools. 

They are strict about pictures, and since we were soaking, we didn’t bring our phones into the pool area at all, but this is from their website. They have 4 different pools, all at different temperatures ranging from 95°-105° and you can stay as long as you like. It was so nice to soak and relax and we stayed for hours, going from pool to pool and drinking their delicious mineral water. It was heavenly.

After our relaxing soak, we hiked. We laughed because we did that backwards, but we wanted to make sure we were able to enjoy the bathhouse and it was semi busy. We hiked up to this cool lookout tower. We didn’t go up in the tower, but it was a fun hike. 

And we met some fun people up top that offered to take some pics. After all of our soaking and hiking, we were pretty famished and it was early afternoon, and we were still over 1000 miles from home, so we ate snacks in the car and made tracks. 

We made it to Mississippi, another first for Matt, by 5:00. 

He does pushups everywhere. 🙄

I looooove a road trip. This one was so pretty. 

Other notable happenings - we almost ran out of gas in search of the lowest price. Thankfully we made it and saved like $2, so go us. We ate dinner at a Huddle House, like a generic Waffle House, and it was ok, but the service was wonderful. She was pretty busy, so she gave us each a free piece of pecan pie (🌟). We stayed that night in a so/so hotel in Tupelo, MS. 

Then Lexi sent me the most darling video. It was long, so not the best quality, but they did the marshmallow test with Emmi and he is the sweetest. 

This was my favorite part. 😍

Then finally daddy came back and said he could eat them. This patient boy was so happy!

And I am in love with his cute glasses! He told Lexi “I can look better!” (see better) 😍 These precious boys!