Our Trip to
Hot Springs, Arkansas
April 18-20, 2003
Friday morning (April 18) Jacob and I left out of Minden and headed to Hot Springs for a relaxing long weekend vacation.
We arrived at our cottage (Summer Lake Resort), located on beautiful Lake Hamilton, around 9:30. I was immediately satisfied with where we had choose to stay. From the front door step of our cottage to the foot of the water was about 12-15 ft. We unpacked all of our bags, and Jacob docked his boat in the water. There are pics below that I took on my digital of the view of the lake from the cottage. It was beautiful. The pics really can't show how relaxingly beautiful it was. You'd have to of been there to appreciate. Jacob took more pics on his regular camera and I will have to get them scaned and on here soon. There are alot better pics on his, but I got some good ones on mine too.
After unloading everything and walking around stretching our legs from the ride, we headed down to The Belle of Hot Springs, a riverboat that takes you around Lake Hamilton, where all of the beautiful homes on the lake are. We got there around 12:30, they served us food, and after eating the tour began. We got back to shore around 1:45 and headed to Wal-Mart.
There we had to pick up some burgers to grill and an Arkansas fishing licence. We left from there back to the cottage and onto the boat, into the lake. Fish wasn't biting to good, but the ride around the lake was nice. Jacob an I did catch 1 fish a piece that day, but that was it. After about 2 hours of no fish biting we headed back to shore to start grilling burgers, cause it was about time to eat again.
That night, we grilled, then ate the burgers on the deck over looking the lake, drank some beer, chilled and enjoyed the quiet & peacefulness. Then came in to relax in the jacuzzi that was also a plus to getting that cottage.
Saturday, is was expected to rain all day, and indeed it did. That sucked, cause we had just got the fishing licences and it spoiled any chance of fishing that day. We woke up that morning, made biscuits and eggs, then headed down to the bathhouse which we had been planning to do. Buckstaff Bathhouse, the only original still functioning bathhouse in Hot Springs. That was really nice. Refreshing and relaxing. Jacob and I both got the traditional package deal. After leaving there, we rode up the mountain to look down over the city. It was dreary and rainy, so we ended up heading back to the cottage got a shower & went to this Pizza place called Rod's. It wa pretty good. We got the pizza buffett. Can't really go wrong with pizza. We went back to the cottage, chilled, took a nap, watched TV, then later that evening went to Ryan's and ate their buffett. Came back to the cottage and got in the jacuzzi and relaxed til we were ready to go to bed.
Sunday, it had quit raining and the sun was out, another beautiful day, but it was also time to start packing up to head back to Minden. We woke up that morning and I got in the jacuzzi and told Jacob to go out and get all the fishing he wants done before we start getting ready. I was gona miss that jacuzzi, you can tell. Haha. We got all packed up and the owner of the cottages said we could leave Jacob's boat there, while we went downtown to get the last few hours of Hot Springs in that we could. We went to this little pancake shop downtown, which I recommend to ANYONE going to Hot Springs, called The Colonial Pancake and Waffle House. They have other foods besides breakfast foods, but thats what we had, and they're pancakes are out of this world. We walked around downtown Hot Springs, going in different little shops. We walked up behind bathhouse row, where we got some really great pictures. The spring waters flowing from these cave things and cause the spring waters are so hot, there was steam rising up. Made it look so beautiful. I got pictures below to show.
Time to head back to Minden....... We went, picked up the boat from the cottages and Louisiana bound we were. Then we came to DeGray Lake. Beautiful, Beautiful, Beautiful! We had to stop. Since we couldnt do much fishing cause of the rain Saturday, we might as well get out there and try it again, besides that, it was a beautiful day and I wanted to be in the boat on the water. We saw and fished in some beautiful places. The water so clear, you could see 9 ft down to the bottom. Fish didn't want to bite. It was Easter day, and I have heard myths that fish don't bite on Easter weekend. Who knows? But all-in-all, it was worth it whether we caught 0 fish or 100. After about 2 1/2 hours on DeGray, we headed back to Minden, this time, no stop. Minden Bound we were.
Hope you enjoyed reading my vacation and altho I am sure noone made it this far reading, I had fun typing it.
Thank You for visting my page. Check out my pics below. I will have more Ark Vacation pics on here when I get the pics from Jacob's online.
All of the above pics are just different views we had of the lake from different areas. (Mostly just wanting to take pictures!)That's Jacob you see on the dock in that 2nd picture. All you could see out of the windows in the living area & bedroom was water. It was so nice!
All of these above pics were taken in downtown Hot Springs, around Bath House row. You can't really tell in the pictures, but in the 2 pics where Jacob and I are sitting on rocks, there is hot spring water flowing over those rocks and steam rising up, but you can't see the steam in the pic either. Also is a picture of the BuckStaff Bathhouse, where Jacob and I both got the traditional bathing packages. It was nice and relaxing.
The houses in the pictures are only a few of the MANY big beautiful houses on Lake Hamilton that I got good pictures of. I'd say the cheapest house on that lake would have to be around $500,000(That being cheap). They're beautiful dream houses. The 4th picture is taken from atop the mountain in Hot Springs.
