08 Jul Working in the Fordyce

With the 4th of July holiday, it was a pretty busy week here at Hot Springs. We had over 2,000 visitors on Monday. While I don’t work the front desk, I can tell when the Fordyce (the most luxurious bathhouse on Bathhouse Row) is full and I helped with sweeping at the end of the day. That’s another unique part of this internship; I work inside an old bathhouse/spa that was built in 1914. This living museum no longer is a place for people to bathe, but instead is now used at the park’s visitor center and museum. The building is kept very cool in order to keep artifacts at a maximum preservation temperature, but it also makes me have to wear a sweater in my office even though outside it’s usually melting hot. The building actually was built on top of a flowing hot spring, which is now in the basement of the building (pictured above). I enjoy working in this historic building. Our Latino Conservation Week event is coming along. We just put an order in for a banner we will be using, and are finalizing a flyer and press release. This past weekend I took advantage of a coworker’s commute, and got a ride to spend a day in Little Rock. Little Rock reminds me a lot of Salt Lake in size, with a population of around 200,000. It has many beautiful bridges that cross the Arkansas River, which has its beginnings in Colorado. I explored downtown, ate at some really nice restaurants, and biked 30 miles on the Arkansas River Trail which also went over what I was told was the country’s longest pedestrian bridge (Big Dam Bridge). My destination on that trip was Pinnacle Mountain State Park. Pinnacle actually looked like a mountain (being from Utah, I poke fun at the mountains here by calling them hills or slopes). It was still small, but that made it an easy climb to the top. I can’t believe I’m in the last month of the internship, but I know I still have a lot left to do before I can start dreaming of the desert back home.