Moment: Saturday, October 31st at 10:37 PM
*while ziplining* "You look like a little archeologist, so I guess you're a miner and a minor"
It's been two months since I last wrote a post, so what better way to come back that with the way this blog began - with traveling! This pandemic has come with its many challenges, but the major silver lining for me personally has been the extra time I've been able to spend with my family. Right now, the four of us are all privileged to be able to work from home, so we were FINALLY able to coordinate a family vacation to celebrate my brother's 18th birthday.
We had two main criteria: lots of nature, so we could safely social-distance outdoors, and less than a ten-hour drive away, so we wouldn't spend half of our trip on on the road. Our family isn't really a fan of having a itinerary when we go on vacation, so I proposed that we go to Hot Springs, Arkansas, so we could just spend time walking around parks, hanging out by lakes, and seeing where the days take us.
We opted for an AirBNB instead of a hotel to avoid coming in contact with other people, and booked a few days at a lake house about ten minutes away from downtown, so we could enjoy the view and serenity of the water while being close to the heart of Hot Springs. We were still working and taking classes remotely on our own sporadic schedules, but the lake made learning about physics and statistics a bit more fun.
The first thing we did in Hot Springs was go to the namesake of this town: the hot springs. It comes out of the ground at 140 degrees, but by the time it bubbles up to the surface, it is perfectly warm to the touch, giving off steam that makes you feel like you're in a sauna. This hot water was used in the bathhouses on Bathhouse Row, and there are fountains where the spring water is cooled down enough to drink, so people can just fill up bottles and jugs to take home.
I was amazed by how well-preserved and readily accessible the parks for people to enjoy while living in the city, which I really wish I had during the pandemic when pretty much all you can do is be outdoors. Hot Springs National Park literally shares a street with downtown, so you can go from standing on top of a mountain to dining at a pizzeria just by using a crosswalk.
And yes, we actually did do that - we climbed up 216 feet of stairs up to the top of the Hot Springs Mountain Tower, took in the beautiful view of the park, then went back down and got some incredible New-York style pizza at Deluca's before going to the Maxwell Blade Theater of Magic for a live magic show. Pro tip: don't take someone who knows a lot about magic tricks if you want to keep the wonder alive, because my brother is really into magic tricks and he debunked most of the illusions with "Wanna know how he did it?"
Although we stayed within a ten-mile radius for most of our trip, we decided to go completely out of our comfort zone on our last day by going to Ron Coleman mine, where we dug for quartz for what seemed like minutes but was actually four hours, and ziplined over a crystal mine! It was a day full of adventure that left us with a car full of gorgeous quartz crystals (and dirt!), and it was the perfect ending to our short getaway to our neighboring state.
Now it's back to normal life, or as normal as it can be right now, but I think we all experienced a sense of renewal that has reenergized all of us out of our eight-month quarantine slump. We saw a magnet at a gift shop that sums up this vacation pretty well, because just like our trip, it was simple but reminded me that it's important to care for ourselves, even in the midst of personal, political, or pandemic-induced uncertainty.
