We had a really great time in Louisiana. We spent the last day visiting with Marshall's Aunt Mimi and his parents. On our way out of town, we stopped at Edie's Biscuits for breakfast. One of Marshall's professors used to send students to pick them up before certain lectures, and he was really excited to take me there. It's a small place that only serves different types of biscuits and was just as good as promised. Great choice on our way out of Lafayette!
We took the scenic route through northern Louisiana and Arkansas, so we didn't make it to Hot Springs in time to actually go to one of the bath houses. But we ended up having a good time anyway. You can tell it was once a bustling resort town and is now not as much a destination vacation. The surrounding areas were pretty poor and the downtown, while cute, was not as glamorous as it once might have been. But it's still a very pretty area of the country and we ended up really liking it. The bath houses aren't all open but they still line the main street. Each one is designed with a completely unique architectural theme, which was really neat. Here is the visitor center for Hot Springs National Park. It's filled with stained glass and marble - just beautiful!
The bath houses were really cool and not all that different from modern spas. People went to them for relaxation or to help with chronic illness. They soaked in different type of tubs, got massages or steam baths, exercised, and received electrohydrotherapy (that one didn't last long).
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| One of the typical rooms for soaking |
The town has a bunch of spigots where people can fill jugs of water for free. So we did that. And the water was really good!
And there are some spots where the springs flow freely. The water is really hot coming out of the ground; you can see the steam coming out of the fountains in front of the bath houses.
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| Testing the water temperature |
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