Long story short, we liked Arkansas WAY more than we thought we would. Before heading to the Mississippi delta, Joan & I decided to take a week to go somewhere we hadn't planned on. We figured Arkansas might just be a lot more of rural Tennessee -- little towns on hard times, hilly farms with rocky fields and a few cattle, lots of rusted out old cars and trucks -- but we had time to explore.
It turns out that Arkansas is a whole lot more than we expected and we were lucky to be able to sample some of it. Highlights included:
Lake Charles State Park - Which was not "Horseshoe Bend State Park", but was lovely nonetheless. It turns out Arkansas has the Ozarks and they're tremendous.
Eureka Springs - A little bit of Berkeley in Arkansas.
Bentonville & the Crystal Bridges Museum - The beating heart of Walmart drives a frantically expanding city, a world class museum, and a whole lot more.
Little Rock - Easily the most surprising city we visited. We had ZERO expectations and ended up loving it.
First, our preconceptions about Arkansas were of course partly true. Whether it's rural Tennessee, Alabama, or Arkansas, the poverty can be extreme in the rural South. And when you think about it, the picture was not too different from what we saw in rural Minnesota, New York, or West Virginia. There were boarded up storefronts, rutted out roads, and acres and acres of rusted out vehicles. The poverty rate hovers in the 30% range.
So, just when we thought we knew Arkansas . . .
Horseshoe Bend, AR
We were looking for a place to stay and discovered this FIRST picture and thought, "WOW." We believed it was a place in Arkansas called Horseshoe Bend and we got all jazzed up about finding the closest campsite.
Then, we discovered that, well, THAT Horseshoe Bend is in ARIZONA, so no dice on the campsite.
But wait, there IS a Horseshoe Bend in Arkansas and it looks like this second picture. BINGO! Let's go there. So we put "Horseshoe Bend" in to the Google and . . .
. . . we ended up in a tiny little town called Horseshoe Bend, but no bucolic scenery. It has a Dollar Tree store (in the background across the square) and an airport, oddly, but NO river and NO bend in that non-existent river. It turns out that the Horseshoe Bend we wanted isn't a town, but a small piece of a National Park, far from the TOWN of Horseshoe Bend.
To her great credit, Joan did a quick, "Just kidding!" and pulled out Lake Charles State Park, which was amazing. Ok, it was raining most of the time, but we got there in time for the 49ers game. The park had terrific wifi and the cleanest bathrooms & showers you ever saw. AND we just about had the place to ourselves.
I think "Horseshoe Bend" will be an imaginary destination and an inside joke for the next 50 years. :-)
Oh, and just in case you missed this news flash, someone paid for a billboard in rural Arkansas to make sure you got the point.
Eureka Springs, Arkansas
A friend of Randy's dad suggested that we go to Eureka Springs. It's a little town in the Ozarks way up in the NW corner of Arkansas. She'd described it as "a little bit of Berkeley in Arkansas". It was that . . . and much more.
At the RV park we were greeted by Dave, in the Trump hat, who was very excited to tell us about The Holy Land. (yes, you read that right) It turns out that it's just up the road and you can:
Visit a Bible Museum
See bible sculptures
Tour a recreated Holy Land
Go on mountain biking and hiking trails
Visit the "Jerusalem Chapel"
See a recreated "Passion Play"
See an authentic 10 foot section of the Berlin Wall
Visit the 65 foot tall "Christ of the Ozarks"
and much more
Of course, very little of that was open on a Monday night in mid-winter, but we did get to look around. It was a pretty amazing slice of this part of middle America. They take their Christianity very seriously here, though we're still not sure how the Berlin Wall fit in.
HOWEVER, Once we got down into the town of Eureka Springs it did live up to it's little Berkeley reputation. The first store we stumbled on was a lingerie and sex toy store. After that, we wandered through a surprisingly large town, built into the side of a very steep hill. The fun part was, perhaps because it was off-season, we ended up spending like 30 minutes in each store because we'd get into conversations with the workers and store owners. They were an unusually fascinating bunch of people, from all over, but one thing or another had brought them to Eureka Springs and they'd ended up staying. The food at Nibbles restaurant was particularly amazing. And the clothing stores were having 50% off sales.
Bentonville, Arkansas
We would have loved to stay in Eureka Springs for another day, but there was a snow storm forecast for that night (they were saying "4-6 inches!") and Eureka Springs is very hilly. It's NOT a good place to be when the roads are slippery and your car weighs over 8000 pounds. So after a great day, we high-tailed it out of the hills and down into Bentonville. While we still had great snow there, it certainly wasn't 6 inches worth. . . but it was totally wonderful! :-)
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Bentonville got on the map because it's the home of Walmart. I suppose because Walmart is still going strong, so is Bentonville. There certainly were a HUGE number of construction projects going on in town, even in the depth of winter. However, the Walton family's impact on NW Arkansas goes well beyond the offices of Walmart. They're investing in building local downtowns, creating public art, and improving public health. They've also built miles and miles of local trails, enough to turn NW Arkansas into the "mountain biking capital of the world". If we'd only come during a season of better weather, we could easily have spent a week hiking and running.
But one of the splashiest moves the family has made has been the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Spearheaded by Alice Walton, this over-the-top fabulous building opened about 10 years ago. They have an amazingly large collection of art from the past 300 years or so as well as a variety of rotating visiting exhibits. We were particularly taken by the fashion exhibit and the modern art. However, though the art was amazing in its own right, it's the building that stole the show for both of us. It's an incredible wood & glass structure built around two spring-fed ponds. The whole package is a definite must-see.
Little Rock, Arkansas
If Arkansas was an afterthought on this trip, then Little Rock was an afterthought of an afterthought (afterthought squared??) If you'd pressed us, I guess we knew about the Little Rock Nine, but I'd totally forgotten about (for example) the Clinton Presidential Library. We never expected that it was such a pretty little town . . . and that the food was good . . . and that there was an amazing PURSE museum . . . and a "Big Dam Bridge"?
We spent a day WALKING all over Little Rock, covering close to 9 miles. We were pooped at the end, but it was a beautiful day to explore and Little Rock had plenty to show off. Highlights included the Clinton Presidential Library, the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site, the Arkansas State Capital, the Esse Purse Museum, and a whole slew of little shops and markets along the way.
First, a few of the random sites.
The Clinton Presidential Library
We'd never been to a presidential library (we missed Carter's in Atlanta, that was a mistake), so we made sure to go to Clinton's while we were in Little Rock. There are lots of knick-knacks and presidential gifts and so on. The one thing that struck me most among all the political accomplishments were the two electoral college maps from 1992 and 1996. They just don't seem possible today, but then again it also seems crazy to imagine Arkansas with a Democratic governor. Maybe it just goes to show how quickly politics can change . . . or maybe the demise of the Fairness Doctrine (1987) was new enough that the radical media's impact had yet to shape the country.
The Esse Purse Museum
After the over-the-top-ness of the Crystal Bridges museum, this tiny little museum came with very tiny expectations. It FAR exceeded those. The website claims that it is one of only 2 purse museums in the world. Regardless, it is a hidden gem with a remarkably simple goal: "The ESSE Purse Museum tells the evolution of 20th-century American woman through the bags she carried and their contents".
The museum represents the collection of a woman named Anita Davis and the floor space might be only 2000 square feet + a gift shop. What we loved about it was that it took that very simple goal and did it extraordinarily well and clearly. The exhibits run the gamut of the 20th century and are broken down by decade. We particularly liked this description on the very first case. It's a quote from a book.
Truer words have rarely been spoken. Here's a look at a small slice of the collection.
Little Rock Central High School and the "Little Rock Nine"
Yet again, the National Park Service surprised us. There's a terrific visitor center just across the street from the High School that takes this small piece of the Civil Rights movement and sucks you into to all the excruciating detail and personal experiences of the moment. The videos of press reports and interviews with the Little Rock Nine about their experiences are truly exceptional.
In almost every Civil Rights Trail site both Joan and I have wondered "why didn't we get any of this growing up?" We're guessing that we were just the wrong age, that the events were just too new to make it into the relatively inflexible curricula of the time. Yet, even later in life, I know I've seen presentations on the Little Rock Nine and perhaps an interview or two, but they never had the impact on me that this site did. I'm not sure why exactly though. Maybe we're just old enough now to finally appreciate the history? Or maybe it's just that once you begin to immerse yourself in the whole timeline of the Civil Rights Movement that the importance of the integration of Central High School seems clearer. Coming in 1957, soon after the Brown v. Board decision (1954) and Emmett Till's murder (1955), yet well before the lunch counter sit-ins (1960), the Freedom Riders (1961), and the Edmund Pettus Bridge (1965), the courage of these nine students and the community that supported them seems like a metaphorical starting gun for the protests to come. It really felt to us like this was the beginning.
Side note: We were struck here also by the mention of some elementary schools where integration went well, at least at the kids' level. There's a picture and a news article below and maybe it just goes to show that discrimination is an adult problem?
The Big Dam Bridge
Before leaving town, we had to bike across the "Big Dam Bridge" on the west side of Little Rock. It's an amazing pedestrian bridge built into a dam on the Arkansas river and it's almost a mile long. And of course, a really great name.
Arkansas turned out to be a great way to refuel our spirits and get ready for Mississippi -- the poorest state in the Union and the birthplace of the Blues.
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