Rural Art Retreat in Hot Springs

The High School art teacher and I went to an art retreat in Hot Springs on Thursday and Friday. It was a great experience. We learned a lot of new things and got 26 hours of professional development(yes they kept us busy). In the AM we went on a boat ride on Oachita Lake and took pictures and sketched in a sketchbook. In the afternoon we learned about Indonesian art. Then we checked into our room in the Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs Link to Arlington. We then had dinner on our own. We walked down bathrow checking out all the menus and decided on Italian. We went into the restaurant which seemed very fancy. We were afraid we were under dressed and we both look younger than we are. They kept bringing us different kinds of bread which were wonderful. We both loved our meals but could not eat much of them because they had fed us all day at the retreat. After this we met up with the group for a few hours of gallery tours. We were always right behind the group. On the way back we walked through a little bit of Hot Springs National Park. I never realized it was right in the middle of town. I kept sticking my hand in the Hot Springs, even though I knew they would be hot it was startling everytime. I am not sure if they keep the water in the bathhouses that hot but they felt too hot to get into. Friday we went to Garvin Woodland Gardens Link to Gardens. We did some more sketching and took several pictures. We then learned about website design and a few contemporary art lessons.