Part 5 - Time To Go Home

Before we headed home we visited a few of the sites around Eureka Springs. It is a small town with a population of just over 2000 but it is also a huge tourist town and goes all out to cater to them - especially the bikers. We didn't like that at all as they were just so noisy roaring up and down the roads and it kind of made Mom chuckle as they weren't young bikers - most of them looked over their 50's. At one time there use to be a thriving railroad at Eureka Springs but today there is just a tourist train.  Many of the carriages and trains  are SLOWLY being worked on but with such a small resident population they don't have a lot of people with the skills needed to repair them and bring them back to their former glory.

Across from the trains was this awesome little musical park where they have created all kinds of musical sculptures that you can play. Mom's favorite was this giant wind chime and she had fun tinkling them all.


























Eureka Spring has the most amazing collection of unusual houses too. The town is built in a very narrow and rocky valley so a lot of the houses are tall and cling to sides of the hills. We thought it had a kind of German, Swiss, San Francisco feel to the town especially as the streets are very narrow. They class the architecture as Victorian.













As the names suggests Eureka Springs is well known for its springs. There are four main ones and the biggest is this one - the Blue Spring - it puts out 38 million gallons of water a day! We also went to visit Thorncrown Chapel which is a 48 foot high glass chapel. It is a lot like the one we saw in Hot Springs last year but not as big. Dad says the one in Hot Springs was a lot nicer as they had used wood for all the supports where as this one has metal supports. We had the best mini vacation ever and would highly recommend it because not only is Retreat pet friendly but all the parks were and many of restaurants had outdoor areas that were also pet friendly.