October 27th to 29th - Hot Springs, AR

I left Austin after having spent a bit more time sightseeing and a last lunch in the afternoon to drive past Waco to shortly before Dallas, where I spent the nicht in a motel with an indoor pool in order to get at least a bit of exercise. I found that swimming for more than 30 minutes hurts my arms and think, I should do that more often.
The next day I drove right through to Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas. The hot springs have been used already by the native Americans in the area for long time and they were put under federal protection long before there was any other National Park. Today the whole downtown is NP. It reminds me a lot of some rundown places in Germany like Bad Ems, especially as the landscape is very similar to German Mittelgebirgen. The people visiting seem to be all elderly as well, but that might be the time of the year. This is the town where Clinton lived as a child and they just had the last day of their documentary film festival. Of which I met the organizer in the evening in the local bar, where I drank to much, listened to music, danced and generally had a lot of fun until they closed. HS is surrounded by three big lakes and a lot of low forested hills and is not far from the Ozarks, which seem to look similar. People talk very southern and althought there are many black people in town, I didn't see any in the restaurants and bars downtown. People in the bar where I got drunk made remarks about the racism, but still there was no black guest there either. Cycling was wonderful and there is a bikeshop and a HS bicycle webpage organized through the owner of the bikeshop it seems and there signs along one road which mark a bike route, I saw only two people on bicycles from far away, nevertheless I had a beautiful ride.