Opting to stay a full day in Hot Springs, AR after our first night, we took the dogs to a local boarder/hospital and decided to check out the town and local area. First we found our way to the top of a tower which overlooks the city and gives a small history of the use of the surrounding bath houses (which we ended up touring later).
We then took a walk up to Balance Rock which also gave us some pretty cool views and minor bouts of vertigo.
The hike up was pretty fun. There were definitely a population of the locals who used it as their "daily walk" and there were a couple more paths which seemed to wrap around to a few other lookouts. A "Sunrise" path amongst others...From there we drove down into the city to get some lunch and to also take a tour of one of the last (as it was) remaining bath houses. Down past the Majestic Hotel (below), we parked the car at the Fordyce Bathhouse. Doubling-duty as also the National Park Visitors Center, it's now also a museum.
Fordyce Bathhouse (below)
The amount of relaxing and leisure these bathhouses provided was extremely interesting and almost comical. Utilizing a machine room in the basement, it pumped the contents from the springs below upward as a healing elixer and fountain of youth of sorts to many. People would come from all over the world to test it's legend. Finally going out of business in 1962, it sits now as seen above...
Then we scooped up the dogs, Annie played with the campground's ducks and we toasted up some of our leftover beignets after dinner (which we got at lunch in Hot Springs). The ducks were a little smelly in my opinion, but all around ok guys so we let them hang for a while.
The next morning we started our drive for Checotah, OK. Home of Carrie Underwood! Oh my garsh! On the way there we stopped at Wild Horse Mountain BBQ (below). Apparently a hotspot in Sallisaw, OK, it's walls were covered with celebrity food endorsements and portrait signatures. The beef sandwiches were delicious.
Then it was on towards Checotah. We stayed a night there in a quiet site near lake Eufaula. Complete with a small farm of cows, bulls, chickens, rabbits, etc., it provided also a cool spot for Harbor to bathe. 
We found our way, for the first time, onto Rt.66 today. A long grid of E950, S0903, etc. type roads (below) finally delivered us into Chandler, OK were we met Rt.66.
Lunch was at Jacks BBQ (seeing a patter here? ha). Annie literally after every bite mumbled "mmm" while eating her brisket sandwich.
We are both getting eaten alive by mosquitos at our site in El Reno. We sit right along he highway, where we literally had to pass through a highway gas station parking lot to get to the short road which lead here. They have a small pen with buffalo along the entrance way, but other than that it's seemingly pretty utilitarian for drivers as they make their way somewhere else. As we are...
Tomorrow it's on to Amarillo, TX via Rt. 66.
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