Arkansas Adventures
We spent a week of November in Arkansas. Gus and Milton were excited to add a new state to their list!
Our reason for heading to Arkansas was to attend my cousin’s wedding. It was a beautiful celebration of Remington and Travis. The wedding was in Fayetteville so we took the opportunity to explore.
First up was the Fort Smith National Historic Site. I added a new stamp to my NPS passport and we learned the history of the criminal justice system on the frontier in the late-1800s. It was pretty crazy and not too humane!
The next day, Kari, Joe, Kasyn, and Lakyn met up with us for some hiking. Before we got started, Lakyn let everyone know she is a great hiker and that she would give Milton a run for his money on being the hiking leader. Milton is happy to report that he stayed in the lead for the entire hike and Lakyn faded about halfway through! From the start, Gus told Kasyn that he would challenge her for the title of hiking caboose, but she ended up winning that.
Lakyn is know to be the fashionista of the family, so I was happy to discover that she picked out a pink top, black leggings, and black tennis shoes for the hike — the same outfit I was wearing. I now know that I have good fashion taste!
After our weekend in Fayetteville, we headed to Hot Springs. When I reserved our campsite in the spring, I knew it likely wouldn’t be a vacation trip, but I didn’t expect that I would work 60+ hours, which is what ended up happening! We were going to leave Hot Springs on Thursday, but ended up extending the trip to Sunday so that I could actually leave the campground and explore Hot Springs on Saturday.
While I worked in the Airstream, Milton took advantage of his easy window access to make sure that no campground shenanigans happened without his knowledge!
Milton and I also managed to fit in some runs and Gus joined us on one of them. Normally Gus is a lot of dead weight on runs, but the weather was very cool, so he kept up for a change.
The only excitement we had during the week (other than the armadillo that Milton saw out the window) was Gus getting sick and having to go to the vet. Ultimately, we don’t know what happened to him, but he was vomiting and couldn’t keep any food or water down. He didn’t even beg for food, which, if you know Gus, you know that means he was in bad shape. The vet gave him some medicine and he started to feel better after about 24 hours.
On Friday evening, we ventured into Hot Springs and walked around. Behind the National Park visitor center, there were a few places to interact with the springs. It was really funny how Gus and Milton couldn’t figure out why the water was hot. They had very confused looks on their faces!
On Saturday, we headed back to the National Park and did some hiking. Luckily Gus had pretty much recovered and we hiked about five miles.
After our hike, we stopped at David’s Burgers for lunch. I recommend it if you’re in central Arkansas. While we waited for our food, they brought out fries for us and constantly came around asking if we needed more fries. After we were done eating, someone brought us a small cup of twist soft serve. (Oh and the burger was good too.) I had promised Gus that if he was good, I would give him some fries, so the extra fries we got from the pass around were put to good use when we got back to the car.
Hot Springs was a really pretty area and we’d like to go back and do some more hiking if we get a chance. Maybe sometime when my work is not so crazy!
