Meandering through Arkansas

Friday and Saturday, Aug. 3 & 4, 2012--Bentonville, Van Buren, Altus, Clarksville, Conway, Little Rock, and Arkadelphia

Mike, my high school friend who drove up to join me, and I decided to drive back to Bentonville to see two museums we missed Thursday because of their closing hours.  After breakfast, we drove back up there and stopped first at the Walmart Visitor Center which opens at 6:30!!  There's not a lot worthwhile to see, but it was interesting seeing the old advertisements from the newspapers, following the progress as the company expanded, etc.  NOTHING was said about Gibson's Discount Centers, yet it was quite successful with the same concept for years before Walmart.  My guess is it is much like the fact that the Walt Disney Corporation never admits that Walt Disney's 1949 visit to Tivoli Gardens (with its rides based on Hans Christian Anderson characters, it's very effective use of space by having sections backed up to others, etc.) in Copenhagen is what caused him to have the idea for Disneyland rather than his own unique talent to come up with the idea.  I'd bet that Sam Walton saw what Gibson's was doing and just duplicated it in a bigger and better way.

From there, we went to the Museum of Native American History.  It's rather interesting with LOTS of displays of arrowheads, spearheads, axe heads, etc.  It also had wonderful exhibits of headdresses, beaded work, etc.  It wasn't obvious who was paying for the museum or why it was there, but it is worth seeing if someone is coming for Crystal Bridges (which we saw Thursday) and the Walmart Visitor's Center.

We returned to Fayetteville where Mike got into his pickup to return to Oklahoma and I left for more wandering.  My first stop was Van Buran, an older town in western Arkansas.  I walked the streets seeing the old bank, the old opera house, and the various stores.

From there, I headed toward nearby Ft. Smith.  I knew little about the city, but I guessed that it had not grown much over time and had, therefore, a depressed economy.  The neighborhoods seemed to fit my assumptions.  Downtown was more alive than I expected; they've done a rather good job of keeping stores in the buildings and in enlivening the area with loft apartments.  Heading to the local Sam's Club for gasoline, I got in a MESS.  It's the highway that goes to the former Ft. Chaffee and also has all the present-day shopping facilities.  It was one big traffic jam at 12:45!!

I took a back road out of Ft. Smith, because Bob Maroney had suggested I go to Altus, the wine producing area of Arkansas.  It's a small town near a lake.  The area is atmospheric.  I found signs for 3 different wineries.  One, when I tried to follow the sign, took me a direction I didn't want to go, and I turned around after about 5 miles.  But I found two of the wineries just to the east of the town side-by-side.  Although they have other grapes, like most wineries in this part of the country they mostly use muscadine grapes which produce a somewhat sweet wine.

I rejoined the main highway in Clarksville, but I drove through the town first.  It is another older town that I wanted to explore, but it wasn't as nice as Van Buren.

I spent the night at a Days Inn in Conway.  It's a college town with one state university (University of Central Arkansas) and two private universities (Central Baptist College and Hendrix College).  It was HOT, so I just stayed inside my room for the rest of the evening.

Saturday morning, I drove by the campuses in Conway before heading out.  They gave the town a bit of the atmosphere of Abilene in Texas.  The Baptist campus was quite small, but the other two were nice.

My main goal today was to visit Little Rock.  I parked near the Clinton Presidential Library and visited there.  It was fine, but I will never go to a Presidential Library again.  They are all really just propaganda museums.  Although I voted for Clinton, there was no need for me to re-visit his presidency, to see the gifts that were given by foreign leaders, to see another reproduction of the Oval Office, etc.  (I was once at the Lyndon Johnson Library and saw all those things there, too.)

Downtown Little Rock is attractive.  There is an old warehouse district between downtown and the Clinton Library that has lots of shops, restaurants, bars, etc.  It backs up to the river through town which has been landscaped nicely and has good trails used mostly for biking.  I went to the Saturday market which was nice.  I happened by their Peabody Hotel (built by the Memphis hotel) just 15 minutes before the march of the ducks (a tradition at all Peabody Hotels where ducks come out of the elevator, walk along a red carpet, climb steps, and then hop into a pond in the lobby where they spend their day).  I went inside to see the event and visited with some members of the Wall Family which had 400 people there for the family's 100th anniversary reunion.

Next door to the Peabody, I toured the Arkansas State House Museum which is in the original capitol building.  Built rather cheaply, they had to eventually abandon it and build a new one in the early 1900s.  This one has been restored and has various exhibits now.

Although it was warming up quickly, I walked to the present capitol building and toured it.  It is much nicer and bigger than the older building.  It is also much simpler than most of the capitol buildings I've seen on this trip.  It has an understated elegance rather than an overstated one like most capitol buildings.  It is pretty, however.

I had one last stop to make from there--the Arkansas Arts Center.  It's must interesting exhibit was art produced by tattoo artists.  It wasn't their tattoo art; it was prints, photographs, paintings, etc., they had produced.  It's obvious that people who became tattoo artists have great talent.

It was too hot to do anything else by the time I left town at 13:30.  I stopped at Sam's Club and bought gas. Then I drove to Arkadelphia where I had a reservation at a Super 8 motel for the night.  After staying in the room for a a couple of hours, I went into town to see the downtown area, the state university (Henderson) and the Baptist university (Ouachita).  Both have nice campuses, although I found Ouachita to have a more impressive one.

Steps Walked:  22,855 (2 days)

Miles Driven:  391 (2 days)