Hot Springs! If Baseball Allows.

Day One  June 9      One son's ball season is at an end and the other has a break until Tues. night.  Its Saturday  morning 10:30 a.m., the games over and off we go, us and our friends the Woods.  We've never been to Hot Springs and thats reason enough to go.  With a stop for lunch and gas we arrive at 3:50 p.m., park the car and head for the Ducks. What a great way to get an overview of the area and learn some history at the same time.  Kind of a noisy place (last day of Hog rally) but we  enjoy walking around the Downtown parks and fountains.  This makes us hungry so its off to Coy's Steakhouse, I'm still not used to valet parking.  Great food, great time but when we finish its 8:30 and we have to be in Murfreesboro before 10:00 and thats 60 miles away.  We wind through the hills and make it at 9:50, lucky for us.  Rooms are at a premium as there are other people waiting hoping we don't make it so they can get our rooms.  Up early in the morning.             {Stayed at the Queen of Diamonds Inn.  This is a great place,  large Clean room and very close to the park} 

Day Two  June 10  We arrive at the Crater of Diamonds State Park at 8:30, rent our tools and head to the digs.  I should have known that this was hard, hot and dirty work.   Our friend Mike was really into it.  He dug dirt and sluiced out load after load.   We walked worked and sifted dirt but with no luck.   There were two diamonds found while we were there however.  At 11:30 it was time to call it a day and visit the in-house water park.  Now thats fun if not financially rewarding.  Time to say good-bye to  our friends, their trip is over.  We head back to Hot Springs and visit the Mountain Tower.  Spectacular view!  Time to eat at which time a cloudburst occurs.  Can hardly see the road, but we make it to Fisherman's Wharf.  Unexpectedly Great Food.  Can't recommend it enough.  Our new home,   Country Inn and Suites, a fairly new, clean hotel.

Day Three June 11  Today we slept in.  Felt good.  Went downtown for breakfast at the Pancake House.  Good food.  The decor and waitresses took my wife and I back 30 years.  What's a vacation without...Miniature Golf. The Pirates Cove gave us an enjoyable place to kill some time until the amusement park opens.  Magic Springs and its companion water park, Crystal Falls is a real gem.  We arrived two days after the park made national headlines by stranding riders upside down 150 feet in the air after a freak electrical outage.  There were cameras everywhere.  We figured our chances were pretty good.  It wasn't a real busy day so my boys got to ride every ride over and over and over until they got their fill and then on to the next one.  subseqently they got to ride several times as much as they would at a  larger, busier place with lots of lines.  We rode more in an hour than we could have at Silver Dollar City all day.  No frills, however.   We switched over to the water park and had even more fun.  This is a great place.               After a full day of playing we are hungry.    We're hungry for Barbecue;  but me the great trip planner has fallen down on the job.  To my dismay I find that the two famous Hot Springs BBQ places are BOTH closed on Mondays.  We settle for Stubby's and while not bad did not measure up to what we were expecting.  Hours and hours of trip planning down the drain.  Our money is running low, we feast on 99 cent Root Beer floats  at Sonic.

Day Four June 12   Last day.  Last days are usually tainted by the fact that soon we will be home going about our everyday routine.  We go downtown and tour the National Park bathhouse.  It was beautiful the tour was informative but our trip was over.  We went to the fountains and filled up several jugs with the delicious tasting water and headed for home.  We have a ballgame tonight.