RJ Ramblings

Hey everybody! 

I have so many things on my mind right now, that it's actually hard to choose what to ramble about. I think I'll stick with the lighter stuff though, and talk about my vacation. 

This first vacation that I've ever really been on with only my partner, I really wanted to go to the beach. I've talked about that on here before. I wanted to go to California. But my partner really wanted to go visit a college friend of hers who was performing in a musical in Little Rock, Arkansas. I'm like... okay, I guess we can just have a small vacation in Arkansas right now, and go to the beach later in the year. But where the heck are you supposed to vacation in Arkansas? So, I looked into it some and decided that we could go to Hot Springs National Park. 

So, Friday we drove to Little Rock. It was a really nice drive - my new car is fantastic, and the roads were pretty empty and we stopped at this delicious Mexican place in Texarkana. We got to Little Rock and hung out with my partner's college friend and his boyfriend, we watched the musical that he was performing in, had a good night in a nice hotel, then spent the morning with college friend also - had breakfast at this outside restaurant and then went to the downtown Little Rock farmer's market. Lots of neat stuff to look at and the weather was gorgeous. 

In the afternoon, we drove to our condo in Hot Springs. I was a little disappointed when we got there, because looking through all the pictures and stuff online, I really expected it to be a more isolated area, but Hot Springs has a huge casino in the middle of it, and everything around the casino is a really low-income, pretty sketchy looking area. I was expecting beautiful scenery, and I felt like I got suckered. 

We still had a good time though. Went to see Doctor Strange 2. Ate more good Mexican food (I swear that's almost all we ate). 

The next day, we went to a place called Garvan Gardens and it was beautiful. We walked around the trails. This is what I really wanted to do on my vacation here. If I couldn't go to the beach, I wanted to go hiking through some pretty areas. The gardens here was probably my favorite part of the whole trip. We had a great time just wandering around looking at everything.

Then we decided to check out downtown Hot Springs. Past the casino and the sketchy area of Hot Springs, it's like there's a sudden change and when you hit downtown, it's a whole different place. Everything is pretty and the buildings are all from like the 1800s and there's all these little boutique shops everywhere. We ended up having lunch there, visiting a few shops, and then going to the National Gangster Museum, which was kind of lame. An hour and a half of them taking you from one room to another to watch a video on the television. Not exactly my thing, but there was some neat memorabilia there from various gangsters who visited and lived in Hot Springs.

After that, being surrounded by people was starting to make me anxious, so we went back to the condo. We swam a bit in the pool there, played a little mini-golf, had some more mexican food at a local restaurant that was AMAZING, drank a few pina coladas and margaritas. Had a good night. 

So, Monday was our last full day there. We both really wanted to visit the actual National Park. I wanted to hike up to the mountain tower that you can see from our condo balcony. So we set out fairly early and started hiking up the mountain. It was a pretty steep hike, and going up was hard, but I loved it. It felt so rewarding to make it to the tower, go up to the top, and look out over the mountains. There was roads so that you could drive up to the tower, and I saw a lot of people doing that, but I'm so glad that we made the hike on foot instead. 

Then, coming back down from the tower, standing about 20 yards from us, we spotted a deer. It was perfect. Exactly what I wanted for a vacation hike - pretty scenery and animals, and no people or tour guides. 

So overall, we had a good time. I don't think I'd go back, as I think we pretty much saw everything I care to see, and it's not a place I'd recommend for most people to take vacation really, but it was a good time for a few days. 

Thanks again for all your support that allowed me to take the vacation. I came back and feel very recharged to get back to work. I was whining to my partner on that last day how much I missed my computer chair and wanted to get back to work. So, now I'm back and working hard and feeling good (except for continuing allergy issues). And hopefully we'll be able to go on another vacation later, to the beach this time. 

Hope you all have a fantastic week! Love ya!