Entries about national

It is Teo's birthday today and the Hobbs National State Park was putting on a Celebration Day which is once a year and has many activities and crafts and games to play .. so we decided to go there in the morning and come back at about 4ish to bake the cake for the kids party later that day...

We arrived at the park and there were not that many people but they had a raffle to win some penguin hats and some exclusive 3DVD case of Peter Attenborough series so we entered that one.

They had a lady to show you all the different skins of the animals you can find in the wild...

There was a couple of volunteers who were doing the back pack game, where you needed to decide what is critical to take on a walk. This was good to check whether or not the kids had remembered anything about the Survival Day!

There were a couple of dressed up animals!

There was a show and tell from one ranger to show snakes, turtle, toad and salamander...

There was a craft area where you could make some necklaces out of wood and natural string ... I need to do show that to all the beavers and cubs as this is a cheap but lovely craft to do:

There was also books to read and puzzles to do:

And by the way.. as there were not that many people there we actually won 3 DVD's!!!!

The multi-diversity trail aims to show you the different plants, animals that lives in the area, they explain the way they are preserving the land and how they are doing conservation....

Today in spite of the greyish not so appealing weather, we decided to venture outside and do one of the many trails in the Hobbs Conservation National Park, which is the largest and the first national park of Arkansas....

The trail is 4.2m with no difficulty and very pretty scenery, with little streams, view points to Beaver Lake, trail through the forest as a single track and lots and lots of wild flowers..

The trail first follows as stream and meanders through the woods...

It then comes onto a lovely viewpoint of Beaver Lake.. and the follow the river until it joins back to the start of the trail...

After the trail we were ravenous and decided to go and eat at the water mill on the river which is supposed to be a lovely working mill where they do their own flowers and grains etc....

So we had lunch there and played a while... the problem was that the water levels were too high for the mill to actually work so we now have to come back another day!!!!

We arrived in Hot Springs, Bill Clinton's town and went straight to the observation tower on top of the hill...

Then we walked the Promenade, a 30 minutes walk along the Bathouse Row and took some pictures of this pretty town... There are 8 bathouses remaining from the original 20... Some are shut like Maurice and Lamar. The rest do not allow kids under 14 to come in and all offer packages with access to the thermal bath as well as some treatments... highly recommended... Fordyce bathhouse gives children a Hot Springs National Park Junior Ranger activity Book which is very informative and fun at the same time...

This is the town where you find the Gangster Museum (we did not visit this) hence this great car parked in front of one of the hotels

This is inside a shop dedicated to Mountain View a local spring source that sells water all over the country...

You can drink hot or cold water throughout the town from fountains and it is really healthy as you can imagine... the temperature of the water is about 63 degrees Celsius so nice and warm!!!

We went to the bath with the children and the only place where they allowed kids under 14 was at the Arlington hotel.... boys and girls go separately so I had some time to myself!!! We all did a mud bath, followed by some hot towel wrapped around your body and I also had a steam cabinet which is so hot you think you are going to pass out!! Good fun and the kids enjoyed it... after fishy feet in Bali I think they will be high maintenance those kids ... watch out ladies!!!!

And I thought the mural in front of the cinema was cool.