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We drove and drove until somewhere in the middle of Kansas where we found a Walmart to set up camp for the night. What we didn’t know was that this Walmart was not open 24 hours, causing us to have to hold going the bathroom all night!! We got up and got on the road and decided we had to get some real Kansas food. Before we got in to Wichita for dinner, we found a YMCA to hang out at and shower. We enjoyed their pools, hot tub, dry and wet saunas, and hot clean showers for a couple hours. We then headed to Two Brother’s BBQ and had some amazing BBQ food, and even got two free souvenir cups!! We then jumped back on the road and drove to Wellington, Kansas and camped in another Walmart for the night. —- The drive to Wellington was uhh… an interesting one. We ended up being on the Kansas Turnpike, which has tolls what seemed to be ever twenty minutes. We attempted to get off the Turnpike, which worked, but the road we were supposed to take was closed and had a detour on the craziest road ever. It had areas of gravel, potholes, semi trucks taking up the whole road making us drive in grass, and was littered with areas of really poorly done paving. We weren’t sure if Zippy was going to make it, but she took it like a champ as usual!
Once we got up, we made our way across the border into Oklahoma. This was going to be another drive through state, but we decided we had to get something/do something in Oklahoma, so we took an exit that we thought was leading us to the Trail of Tears, but it instead led us to an awesome ice cream stop. After ice cream, we got back on the road and made our way into Arkansas to Hot Springs National Park.
We drove to downtown Hot Springs, and were in awe by the historic little town. We window shopped, did the Grand Promenade walk through the national park and talked with an older man filling up his water from the hot spring spout. He told us about the history of the place and that the national park service is all wrong in how they think the water got there because his family has been around that area for years, and they know the real truth. He was a hoot. We decided that we really didn’t want to cook that night, so we flipped through gift cards that we had been saving for this trip and decided to head to Olive Garden. (Thanks to whoever gave us that gift card some time ago!!) After enjoying an awesome dinner, we went over to the Walmart to head to bed. When we pulled in the Walmart there were signs posted that said no trailer overnight parking, but we didn’t see anything about cars, so we parked in the far corner, put the blankets up all around, and got some shut eye. This ended up being the worst experience so far in the car. It was so humid, we had to blast the AC before heading to bed, and woke up twice in the middle of the night to blast the AC for a bit to cool off.
When we got up, we were so ready to get out of the car and into the hot springs. We headed over to the visitors center and toured the old bathhouse, then enjoyed Quapaw Bath for over two hours. Quapaw Bath is a huge room that has four different “hot tubs” in it that are all water from the hot springs themselves. Each pool was a different temperature, so we enjoyed moving around between each one. After feeling like we got our money’s worth, we enjoyed nice hot showers and walked around downtown one more time. We ended up stopping at “Fat Bottom Girls” to get some absolutely delicious cupcakes. This cupcake place was featured on Cupcake wars, and it was definitely for a reason. They were so good!!
Once we enjoyed a couple cupcakes, we got on the road to head to Tennessee to see the one and only Kaylee Leddy.
