Exploring Outdoor Attractions in the Hot Springs Area

Submitted to the Piney Woods Journal in 2019

Hot Springs has been a popular vacation and holiday destination for well over a century. Beyond the obvious allure of its springs and bath treatments, I remember many of my father's friends and coworkers choosing their vacations in the 50s and 60s to coincide with the spring thoroughbred horse racing season at Oaklawn Park.  It could have been many years though for some, like me, to get a chance to return to the resort city and the beautiful Ouachita Mountains.  

I chose a long November weekend, as the leaves were turning their fall colors, to visit.  My intention for was to tour more recently-developed outdoor sites in the area.  Watching the TV broadcast of the big LSU-Alabama football game on a Saturday afternoon intruded just briefly in those activities. With more time, I would have gone back to the Mountain Tower and the many miles of trails in the Hot Springs National Park, explored the four bike trails scattered around the town, and checked out Lake Catherine  and Lake Ouachita State Parks.  I did spend an hour or so walking the old Bathhouse Row and the scenic Promenade above the bathhouses, but nostalgia took a poor second to my desire for actual discovery.

Garvan Woodland Gardens located on Lake Hamilton just a bit southeast of the city was my first priority. Verna Cook Garvin began in the fifties to develop this property as a garden and extensively planted specimens over the next forty years.  The property was bequeathed upon her death in 1993 to the Department of Landscape Architecture through the University of Arkansas Foundation. Now an independent department of the University's Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, the Gardens continue to improve with the support of Arkansas governmental agencies, many generous private donors, and more than 3,500 members.

The lakeside location, size and diversity of the different gardens in Garvan are truly impressive.  The Weyerhaeuser Bonsai Garden, the rock and stream Garden of the Pine Wind, the Southern Inspiration Garden, the Flowering Borders Garden, and the Evans Children’s Adventure Garden are some of separate gardens at Garvan.  One unusual design feature in the Children’s Adventure Garden is the recently completed Bob and Sunny Evans Tree House.  The three-story, suspended house is reached by an elevated walkway.  

Just outside the main gardens area at Garvan is the renowned Anthony Chapel, Arkansas’s premier wedding venue. A complex truss system for the 60-foot high chapel mimics surrounding trees and branches. Changing positions of the sun throughout the day cause a shifting pattern of lights and shadows in and surrounding the chapel.  

 

Connected to main peninsula of Garvan with its busy flow of strolling visitors is the more remote Hixon Nature Preserve with an almost two-mile long trail around this preserve.  This trail, the mile-long Woodland Garden Trail loop to the Perry Wildflower Overlook, and the trails within the different Garvan gardens  give even very fit visitors plenty of hiking exercise.   

My next priority was the relatively new Historic Baseball Trail that winds through Hot Springs.  The multiple attractions found in Hot Springs lured many early major league baseball stars, such as Babe Ruth and Cy Young, to do their spring training and partying there.  Major league baseball spring training in Hot Springs began in 1886 with National League’s Chicago White Stockings escaping the colder weather in the North to train for their upcoming season.  This tradition of spring training lasted until the 1940s.  A series of historical markers linked to digital technology allows city visitors to see places where the greatest baseball stars stayed and played.  The cast-aluminum plaques include the spot where Babe Ruth in 1918 smacked a home run that traveled an unbelievable 573 feet and landed in a pit at the Arkansas Alligator Farm.  The baseball trail’s website allows access to a complete list of the 30 or so plaques that provide more information on particular players and ballfields.  As a Boston Red Sox fan since Ted Williams roamed left field at Fenway Park, I chose the plaque of his contemporary legend, Stan Musial, to photograph and share. 

Unlike other state parks that tourists have long visited in the Hot Springs area, DeGray Lake Resort State Park was established in 1974 and is Arkansas’s only resort state park.  Nestled along the north shore of 13,800-acre DeGray Lake and south of the city of Hot Springs about 20 miles, a wide variety of outdoor adventures and resort class amenities are available. Nature activities include lake cruises, kayak tours, the championship 18-hole golf course, fishing alternatives, horseback riding, disc golf, tennis and basketball courts, and hiking and biking trails.  Lodging and camping options there include yurts (acronym for year-round universal recreation tents) that are insulated and sit on a deck.  This was my first visit to DeGray, and I had limited time only to inspect the golf course and stroll along one of the shorter trails by the lake.  I’ll be back there when I get any opportunity though.

My last stop in this Hot Springs area trip was a very well-known state park that somehow I had never visited.  Perhaps its location in Murfreesboro, 55 miles to the southwest of Hot Springs and off my normal travel routes and agendas, was the only reason for this.  Otherwise my curiosity about the Crater of Diamonds would have long ago led me there.  Recent publicity about several two and three-carat diamond finds in 2019 might also have encouraged me to make a special effort to go there this trip.  I spent an interesting 90 minutes alone at the visitor center touring the many exhibits and learning about the history and geology of the crater.  Heavy rainfall that day though turned the diamond field into a slippery, muddy mess that prevented my longshot chance of finding a valuable gem.   

Hot Springs and the surrounding area seem to offer more diverse outdoor and recreational options than any other destination spot within an easy day’s drive.   You would have to spend many days or take several trips there to experience most of these attractions.  You still might miss a few of these, as I did when I didn’t get to take a ride on one of zip lines at Adventureworks, Hot Springs.