Hot Springs National Park will be bustling with people and events this weekend as one of the two national parks located within the path of the totality of Monday's total solar eclipse.
The national park is coordinating with NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Earth to Sky, a partnership between NASA and the National Park Service, for free educational events about the eclipse.
"We have a lot going on," Ashley Waymouth, interpretation program manager with HSNP, said. "Because we have NASA coming in, we've been collaborating pretty closely to do a lot of community outreach programs and some in-school education programs with them."
The Garland County Library will be hosting the first of many events, "Scientific Discoveries from Previous Eclipses," which will feature Earth to Sky Eclipse Coordinator Cris White and Kristen Weaver, the deputy coordinator for NASA's Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) Observer program.
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There will also be three presentations at 6, 7 and 8 p.m. today during the special eclipse-themed Bridge Street LIVE. The presentations will be limited to the first 100 people.
The national park's two-day Eclipse Fest! will be held on Arlington Lawn Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Waymouth said each booth "covers something different about space, planets, the moon, the sun or the eclipse," and rangers and NASA and NOAA scientists will be at the event.
"We'll have a stamp system, and if you collect a certain number of stamps, then you could receive some really neat prizes," she said. "We'll have like solar viewers. We'll have some NASA giveaways. We'll have some National Parks giveaways. We'll have a lot of different things that people can earn just by visiting the different booths. And that's free and open to the public, and it's geared towards all ages."
Kai Coggin, the inaugural poet laureate of Hot Springs, will also be performing her poem, "In the Path of Totality, Umbral Illumination," at 1:45 p.m. on Sunday. Coggin composed the poem to commemorate the eclipse, and she said she will be on Arlington Lawn from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. "engaging the public with some poetry activities and writing prompts."
"I wanted to be able to offer a way for people to think a little deeper about this celestial event, and to tap into their own feelings about this rare and significant occurrence," she said. "Hot Springs National Park has graciously given me a tent and a table so folks that are visiting can come up and have a seat with the Hot Springs Poet laureate, and get (to) write their own eclipse poem!"
Coggin said she drew inspiration from the idea of the eclipse "forming a diamond ring, and then a crown."
"When I thought of the metaphor of a diamond ring, I moved it into a promise that a person could make for themselves, a chance to move into a higher version of themselves, and to let go of a shadow they might be holding onto," she said.
"We are darkened in our hearts by so much. It's such a dark time for humanity, all over the world, and I wanted this poem to offer a Keynote for the soul to anyone who might listen and experience the words."
Waymouth said there will be three "official viewing locations within the park," on Arlington Lawn, at the West Mountain summit and in the Hot Springs Mountain Tower parking lot.
"At each of those locations, we'll have park rangers, and we'll have the NOAA and NASA scientists available," she said.
"They'll have these ongoing demonstrations that offer people the opportunity to experience the eclipse through all of their senses. So we'll be taking outdoor temperature readings, so we can track as the temperature drops, because inevitably it does. We'll have this device called a LightSound, which transmits light into a sound, so that way, you can actually listen to the eclipse happening," Waymouth said.
The sites also will have solar viewers, eclipse journals and solar tents.
"That way, if you have mobility limitations or if you can't quite get your glasses on right and you want to be safe looking at the sun, we'll have these 10-by-10 (foot) tents you can stand under, or roll under and look up at the sun through," she said.
The trails on both mountains will be open during the eclipse, but the roads will be closed. Shuttles hold approximately 20 people and will take people up both mountains to the viewing locations, she said.
"There'll be a shuttle pickup at Prospect (Avenue) where West Mountain (Drive) and Prospect (Avenue) intersect and also where Whittington (Avenue) and West Mountain (Drive) intersect," she said.
"Folks can stand in line there if they want to ride the shuttle. ... But the trails will also be open, so if you would prefer to hike and not wait for the shuttle, then you certainly can do that."
The shuttle pickup for Hot Springs Mountain will be near the Happy Hollow Fountain.
West Mountain Drive and Blacksnake Road will be closed to vehicular traffic starting at 10 p.m. Saturday through Monday evening, according to the HSNP eclipse website. Hot Springs Mountain Drive and North Mountain Loop will be closed after the Mountain Tower closes Sunday at 6 p.m.
"It's to mitigate traffic, so we're not jammed with cars going over West Mountain and people just parked on the sides of the roads that would prohibit any type of emergency vehicles from going up and down or over the mountain as well as Blacksnake, too," HSNP Chief Ranger Jeff Johnson said.
"Not knowing how traffic will be during those days, working with the city police department and the county sheriff's department, state police, we're hoping to leave those arteries open for emergency vehicles only. So if an ambulance needs to get to Mountain Pine, they could potentially go Blacksnake Road instead of being stuck in traffic for 45 minutes going out Albert Pike. We're hoping to try to be good community partners and do that for the emergency service workers here in the area."
Johnson also said there will be additional law enforcement officers from the National Park Service over the weekend and through the eclipse.
"We're bringing in additional personnel from other park units around the country, just to help bolster our staff," he said. "Initially, the extra law enforcement guys we're bringing in, they're mainly going to be focused on obviously, crowd control."
He said they have "essentially gathered from other park service units around the country that's experienced eclipse events like this, they've just been inundated with illegal camping, traffic jams, things of that nature. And so, hopefully, by us closing the mountains and the extra personnel we bring in, we're able to mitigate some of those issues."
Camping in the national park is limited to the campground on Gorge Road, and Johnson said camping is not allowed outside that area.
"The only camping that we allow in the park is at Gulpha Gorge campground. I think that Teton National Park, they experienced such an influx of people during their solar eclipse that I think by day two or three prior to the eclipse, they had contacted close to like 500 out-of-bounds campers, people that were just camping on the side of the road," he said.
"I mean, there was no place, no place to go, so they would just pull over on the road and just pitch a tent off in the ditch. ... We're hoping by placing the signage that we're putting out and that we're having made at each trailhead that it'll at least give people forewarning that there is no camping on our trail systems."
Events include the following:
Today
2 p.m. -- " Scientific Discoveries from Previous Eclipses" at the library.
5-9 p.m. -- Bridge Street LIVE featuring Nikki Hill and The Gravel Yard.
6 p.m. -- " The Invisible Network: Bridging Earth and Space" at Bridge Street LIVE.
7 p.m. -- " Solar Eclipse: Nature's Weather Experiment" at Bridge Street LIVE.
8 p.m. -- " Effects of the Eclipse on Earth" at Bridge Street LIVE.
Friday
10:30 a.m. -- Moon Bear's Shadow at the library.
Noon -- "Space Weather and the Eclipse" at National Park College.
1 p.m. -- " The Earth Science Angle on Eclipses" with The GLOBE Program at the library.
4:30 p.m. -- " Build Your Own JPSS-2 and TDRS Papercraft Models" with NASA at the library.
7 p.m. -- " Exploring Careers & Research at NASA and NOAA" at Hot Springs Village Woodlands Auditorium.
7:30 p.m. -- Stargazing Party at Lake Ouachita State Park.
Saturday
10 a.m. to 3 p.m. -- Eclipse Fest! on Arlington Lawn.
7:30 p.m. -- Stargazing Party at Lake Ouachita State Park.
Sunday
10 a.m. to 3 p.m. -- Eclipse Fest! on Arlington Lawn.
2 p.m. -- A Rotation Revolution at Entergy Park Pavilion.
Monday
12:32 p.m. -- Partial eclipse begins.
1:49 p.m. -- Totality begins.
1:53 p.m. -- Totality ends.
3:10 p.m. -- Partial eclipse ends.
A map of the roads and trails on Hot Springs and North mountains show where shuttles will pickup and drop off visitors as well as two of Hot Springs National Park's "official viewing locations." (Submitted photo courtesy of Hot Springs National Park)
A map of the roads and trails on West Mountain show where shuttles will pickup and drop off visitors as well as one of Hot Springs National Park's "official viewing locations." (Submitted photo courtesy of Hot Springs National Park)