Spring 2022 trip - Day 14, Friday May 6th - Hot Springs (AR) to Little Rock (AR) - 1 hike and one urban walk totaling 8.5 miles, About 800 feet elevation gain

 Our morning started with Brian sleeping a little later than I did so I had breakfast by myself at a cool place called The English Muffin in Hot Springs.  A little after that Brian was up and ready to go and we headed out stopping by McDonald's for him.  I found a hike not too far from Hot Springs called the Lake Blakely North Loop. While our enthusiasm for another hike was not huge this morning, the short drive distance and promising photos spurred us on.  The drive ended up involving about 5 miles of gravel road which was not ideal but we made it.  The gravel road ended at a seemingly arbitrary spot in the woods with no signage or obvious appeal.  Thankfully the Alltrails app made it easy to see the way to go.  That trail is nearly wilderness level isolated.  We only heard briefly the faintest distant boat motor noise and otherwise it was just us and the deep quiet woods.  After yesterday's huge rainfall there were a lot of wet spots along the trail but none were muddy and the trail overall was in very fine shape.  The 5.2 miles went by very pleasantly.  There was quite a bit of up and down and compared to some of the other trails we've done this was certainly a narrow foot path so we were a little more aware of the mileage than before but it was great.

After the hike we pressed on towards Little Rock, having another satisfying suburban late lunch at Red Robin.  We then mailed some stuff home to reduce the amount of crap we had to manage on the train and in Chicago. We looked at a few museum options and decided on the Arkansas Inland Maritime museum. Truthfully it was as much based on it being open until 6 PM compared to most museums closing at 5.  The museum consists mostly of a WW2 era submarine and tug boat.  There are guided tours of the submarine and our guide was pretty good.  It's immediately thought provoking to imagine spending even a few days let alone months in such a miserable tight tin can as these submarines (and almost all current submarines) are.  There were just 3 of us on the tour and we had plenty of questions to ask as we traipsed through the endless narrow passageways and stopped over to avoid banging our heads and the endless valves and switches and pipes that cover every inch of the boat. The sleeping quarters were astonishingly awful. Each of the 2 torpedo rooms had 8 or more beds literally inches above the torpedoes. The dining area is about the size of 2 banquet tables and the approximately 90 men on the crew ate in shifts and in very tight quarters.  It's no wonder the submarine service duty is 100% volunteer.  I don't think you could really force people to work in such conditions very effectively and it's a wonder anybody chooses that line of duty.

Immediately next to the maritime museum is the Junction Bridge, a large span over the Arkansas river which has been converted to a permanent pedestrian crossing with the lift bridge piece permanently raised.  It was quite a lot of steps to get up to the raised lift section of the bridge but it provided good views of the river and downtown.  The rest of our limited time in Little Rock was spent downtown eating and wandering the busy President Clinton street where the bars and eateries seemed busiest. 

We are now waiting for our somewhat late train to Chicago.