25-03-2024
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This podcast began because of one simple thing - my curiosity. I discovered Hot Springs Village, Arkansas in September 2018 when Rhonda, my wife, and I first visited. We booked an Airbnb inside the Village some months earlier having never heard of Hot Springs Village. I wanted to find someplace within a 6-hour drive of Dallas/Ft. Worth. The Ozarks have been a long favorite of ours. Not Branson, but prowling around the trails around Table Rock Lake. Big Cedar Lodge cabins were always a preferred stay. Problem...it's 7 hours plus, depending on traffic.
That led me to Google around for someplace that had hills, big trees, trails, lakes, and the kind of nature we loved up in the Ozarks. Eventually, I stumbled onto Hot Springs Village, Arkansas, but I was confused. I'd heard of Hot Springs, Arkansas, and wasn't interested because I knew it was touristy. I wasn't looking for touristy. We weren't interested in leaving DFW to find "things to do." We just wanted to relax, walk trails, and deepen our connection with each other (we celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary in January 2018).
I read up on Hot Springs Village before searching Airbnb. Wait a minute, what? It's a gated community? It's a P.O.A., whatever that is? It's 26,000 acres? There are multiple golf courses and lakes? We don't golf or do lake stuff, but we enjoy looking at golf courses and lakes.
I decided to book an Airbnb basement suite, separate from the owner's residence. It was a queen-bed suite with a bathroom and it was one of the many lakes, Lake DeSoto. We booked it for four nights, I think.
September arrived and we were off to Arkansas, our first real visit to the state since we'd been married. We had some church friends in Little Rock, but neither of us had spent much time in Arkansas as adults. Both of us had been there with our families when we were growing up so we were familiar enough with it because Rhonda grew up in Texas while I grew up in Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana - so we're both from this neck of the woods.
We walked miles of trails during that first visit.
We spent hours in conversation navigating various challenges and opportunities in our life together.
We oggled the trees, hills, lakes, and golf courses. Well, a few of them.
We enjoyed the quiet. The peace. The dark night sky. The wildlife.
We enjoyed a few local eateries.
We enjoyed nearby Lake Ouachita State Park.
Along the way, we had formed far more questions than we had before arriving. I had no idea about this place where we'd just spent 4 or 5 days. All I knew was that I needed to find out more. Mostly, I wondered why I had never heard of this place and why more people weren't visiting. Thoughts of one day living here never crossed my mind. That would happen a couple of years later.
But first...
Another idea crossed my mind almost immediately after we got back home to DFW.
As we entered 2000 I was podcasting. It wasn't even yet called podcasting. Most of us referred to it as audio journaling because before blogging was blogging...we called it journaling. I put my first audio online in 1999. Audio has played a prominent role in my life - first with my love of music. Then my love of the gear required to play my favorite records. By the time I was 15 or so, I was working at a local stereo store selling speakers, receivers, amps, preamps, and turntables. That was over 50 years ago and few things have changed when it comes to my passion for audio. Except that now I've added video to the passion.
Dennis Simpson had been our Airbnb host in 2018. I didn't know him. At all.
But I knew I needed a resident inside Hot Springs Village who would help answer my questions. I trolled the Internet and it seemed fairly clear to me that Dennis might be "my guy" to co-host this podcast I had in mind. I had pages of notes.
