From Albuquerque we drove east to Amarillo for one night and then Oklahoma City for a week, dodging tornadoes and severe thunderstorms along the way. We had been so fortunate with weather until we hit this area!
After Oklahoma City we stayed in Northwest Arkansas for two days so that we could visit Eureka Springs. We attended Sunday services at the beautiful, serene Thorncrown Chapel. This magnificent wooden structure contains 425 windows and over 6,000 square feet of glass. It sits atop over 100 tons of native stone and colored flagstone, making it blend perfectly with its setting. The chapel’s simple design and majestic beauty combine to make it what critics have called “one of the finest religious spaces of modern times.”
Since we were so close to Missouri, we drove to Branson and had lunch at a restaurant situated on Lake Taneycomo.
Our next stop was in Hot Springs, where Donya treated me to a spa day at the Quapaw bathhouse for my birthday. Hot Springs National Park is situated within the city limits, so we drove up to the observation tower, filled water bottles at a public fountain and toured the Fordyce Bathhouse which serves as the Visitor’s Center of the National Park. The bathhouses were used for medicinal purposes and people came from all over to get cures from the healing waters of the hot springs.
