Golden Arches (Making our way to St. Louis)

John and I can’t turn down a National Park touring opportunity, but we don't have a lot of time.  So we grabbed a quick breakfast at "Old MacDonalds" (As he calls it) and walk the historic grand promenade behind the bathhouses, and then saunter up bathhouse row.  Hot Springs National Reserve was first set up to make sure the public would always have access to the curative waters of the springs. 

Now I seem to have picked up John's cold, so if anyone ever needed curative waters…

I actually end up mixing my cold medicine with steaming water from the public taps.  John and I tour a bathhouse, which included “vapor closets” and “needle showers” which seem kind of awful.  Our time is up because we have a very long drive ahead.

This is to be our longest driving day – a full 7 and a half hours by the looks of the GPS readout.  And at first I am grateful that the GPS so automatically plots a quick and efficient route.  But then the drive would come.

I must say, that GPS has been good to me.  With my terrible sense of direction, I have been grateful to have every twist and turn managed for me, even in the simplest of towns.  But in this case GPS failed me.  For while route 67 might technically exists on maps, in real life it is a road in the making and much of it is two lanes going in opposite directions sometimes at 70, sometimes at 80, and sometimes at 45 miles per hour.

It only really dawned on me that there might be another way when we called up Gail and Cliff, the parents of a college friend with whom we would be staying in St. Louis.  When Cliff found out what road we were on and how far we had come all he could say was, ‘Be very careful,” in a kind of wary way that said he wasn’t just being polite.

We don't really stop at all.  So lunch is at Wendy's and we get a snack (and some play time) at Burger King (I feel like we've hit some kind of a road trip triple crown).

It was with great relief that we finally arrived at the Saxtons.  Not just because we could stop driving, but also because Gail had left us real food - chicken and casserole and cranberry sauce and VEGETABLES!!!!

But the best was yet to come, because after dinner there were trains.

Ah the trains.  Mere words do not describe the great assembly of tracks and engines, electric signs and model people, houses and farms, and stations and cars.  John’s eyes just about popped out of his head.  At one point he was so overwhelmed he just ran around the room – trying to take it all in.

Gail and Cliff have a series of December open houses for friends and neighbors, and so Cliff claimed that our visit was a good dry run of the trains, and would John please help him test them? Boy would he ever! 

John ran every sawmill and cattle car, every mail delivery system and milk truck.  I began to wonder who would tire out first, Cliff or John.  It seemed hard to decide which of them had the greater child’s heart.

It was actually me who declared bedtime first and shuttled the lad off to bed.  After a cup of tea with Gail I was to bed too, ready to see St. Louis in the morning.