Owing to the ridiculous cost for airfare to any place we thought to check, we decided we’d try a driving trip for summer vacation. The problem is that Texas is really big, so getting to a neighboring state in any particular direction takes at least five or six hours, just to get out of Texas. Our options were limited. We’d already been to New Mexico and Louisiana, so we decided to try out Arkansas.
For whatever reason, Arkansas (and Oklahoma for that matter) haven’t ever really been on my radar. I’m not one of those people who needs to have visited all 50 states or every national park, etc. But we’d seen friends who’d shared camping and hiking photos from there, and they’re always very pretty. We have some Arkansas local friends that travel all over the state and their travels were a motivating factor as well. Plus, the interstate welcome centers in Arkansas are some of the most helpful and encouraging we’ve ever visted. They’re well-organized and staffed by folks who are excited about tourism in their state.
We actually started our journey on the very last day of June, shortly after the kids finished up their Harry Potter acting camp. As is typical of a Woods vacation, we left far later than 25% of us (that would be me) wanted to. It wasn’t till probably 6:30 that evening that we started our five hour drive to Texarkana. I hadn’t been sleeping well, and Sean had been pulling late nights trying to get a special project done at work. Given our mental state, Sean wound up driving the whole way, and I stayed on high alert making conversation and ensuring he didn’t get too drowsy. It was a long drive.
Day 1 – Texarkana, Hot Springs National Park
We woke up the next morning in Texarkana. After a hotel breakfast, we decided to play tourist for a bit before heading the rest of the way into Arkansas. Maya, ever the piano player, has learned a simplified version of “The Entertainer” by Scott Joplin. It turns out that Texarkana is where he grew up! We could have taken a whole driving tour, but I’m honestly not sure that would have been entertaining to any of us, so we settled on seeing the big Scott Joplin mural in town. It was Twilight Zone-eerie driving around Texarkana – it seemed like almost no one was out and about that morning. The mural was big and impressive and Maya seemed delighted to pose for a few photos (which is not her norm).
Our next stop was to see the famous post office that straddles the Arkansas / Texas border. The kids had fun playing the “now I’m in Texas,” hop, “now I’m in Arkansas” game. We snagged a few quick photos and then were on our merry way to Hot Springs.
As we rolled into Hot Springs, we joked that all the people we didn’t see in Texarkana must have been in Hot Springs because hooo boy was it crowded! We drove back and forth a bit, struggling to even find paid parking that wasn’t full. We finally cycled through the free parking lot till a space opened up.
Hot Springs National Park is an interesting member of the National Park system. While it does have hiking trails and a campground, it is essentially an urban park. What I perceived as one of the main features – Bathhouse Row – is right in the middle of shops and restaurants and a whole pile of tourist traffic.
Part of the reason for establishing this as a national park was to protect the thermal springs and make them available to everyone. There are public fountains around bathhouse row from which you can draw the 140+ degrees Fahrenheit water. Given my half-dead fingers, I was placed in charge of filling all our water bottles, as no one else could hold their bottle while filling. Even I had to take breaks. We cooled the water before drinking it, and enjoyed the flavor immensely. Interesting fact – this water is over 4000 years old! Water seeped down way back then through cracks and fissures to a depth of 8000 feet. Given its proximity to Earth’s mantle at that depth, the water was heated. The heated water flowed along impermeable rock till it found a thrust fault that allowed it to reach the surface at Hot Springs. I read or heard that a million gallons a day flow at Hot Springs National Park.
Another point of interest. Hot Springs National Park is the only national park with its own brewery. And that brewery uses – you guessed it – thermal spring water in the production of its many delightful beers. This was our destination for lunch that first day. The Superior Bathhouse Brewery is housed in the smallest of the bathhouses. We were worried about how long we’d have to wait to be seated given the very heavy traffic in the area, but they have a wonderful waiting system. They took our names and guided us to the bar where we could order beers for the grown ups and root beers for the kids. Then we were told we could go into the air conditioned upper level and hang out at communal picnic tables and sip our drinks and play games while we waited for a table for lunch. Perfect!
We played Uno together and sipped our drinks until our table was ready, and then we wandered downstairs. The beers we tried – Golden Stout, She Don’t Use Jelly (a saison), Bikini Bottom, and a dunkel – were all wonderful. The place was dog friendly, so Ian happily requested dog petting from as many folks as would allow. The food was solid. I know it sounds weird as heck, but my favorite thing I ate at that lunch were the plantains. The kids and Dad had epic desserts, and we were maybe a little sad when we had to finally leave the air conditioning.
After lunch, we wandered the Fordyce Bathhouse, which acts as the park’s visitor center and museum. Many of the bathhouse rooms have been restored, so you can see what it might have been like to experience the “healing waters” back in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Wandering through was interesting enough; intriguing to see what people thought of as medicine back then.
The kids weren’t super interested until they met a friendly park ranger on our way out who completely talked them into becoming junior rangers. I have tried to do this on previous national park visits to absolutely no avail. At her suggestion, we took a walk back to touch the thermal waters coming from the display spring. It was kind of neat to be encouraged to touch the water. Ian was having none of it until I quickly dipped my hand in. Yes, it’s hot. You really can’t linger, but a quick check won’t hurt you. One of the things I found interesting was the shockingly green algae that was growing around the thermal spring. I don’t know if photos will do it justice.
All the old bathhouses are quite pretty and each looks architecturally unique, which makes for an interesting aesthetic when walking down the row. There are still two bathhouses operating, Quapaw and Buckstaff, but the kids were too young to take part.
Finally, we headed away from the Hot Springs mayhem to what we hoped was a peaceful retreat to the house we had rented. The rental property was a little tricky to find, but it was as advertised. The house sits right on Lake Hamilton, and there was plenty of room for us to spread out. After dinner and a supply run, we didn’t have time to swim that first night, but it was fun to watch the geese on the lake and the pretty orange and pink sunset from the porch.
Day 2 – Ron Coleman Mine, Hot Springs part 2
Ian is a rock collector. He willingly reads books, with no goading from us, about gems and minerals. Maya is a treasure hunter (keeping in mind, treasure is in the eye of the beholder). Given this, I was excited to find that there were several quartz mines in Arkansas at which you could dig for your own crystals.
Everyone talks about the Crater of Diamonds state park as a place you must go when visiting Arkansas. And to be fair, I think a diamond or two is found per day, which is pretty incredible. Certainly the payoff would be better if you were one of the lucky one or two who actually found a diamond. But for an 8-year-old, a 10-year-old, and their two middle-aged parents, we thought it would be much more fun to definitely find something of lesser objective value. Plus, Arkansas is known for the quality and quantity of its quartz.
After conferring with our college friend Joe, who is big into minerals and crystals and lives in nearby Little Rock, we decided to visit Ron Coleman mine. They regularly bring up fresh tailings from their commercial mining operation and dump them for visitors to dig through. You pay a fee to access the public digging area – about 4 acres, so there’s room to spread out – and you keep whatever you find. To the kids’ delight, we were finding little pretty sparkling things already in the parking lot!
We had done a little research ahead of time, so we came reasonably well prepared. We had folding step-stools to sit on, a sack full of trowels, little rakes, weeding tools, and screwdrivers, plus gloves for everyone. We had packed a small cooler with drinks and snacks, in case we decided to stay a while. They gave each of us a bag to fill when we paid our dig fee, but we had brought along a couple of empty cat litter buckets as well for hauling home our treasures.
I thought that we might spend an hour, maybe two at the most before the kids wore out on the experience. As it happens though, we kept finding pretty things, and that’s very motivating. I think Sean was pretty disenchanted with the whole affair at first, playing along because Ian especially was so excited about it. And for the first little while, he did a whole lot of digging and not a whole lot of finding. Then I heard him say he thought he had something. After some very careful, meticulous digging, he unearthed the biggest crystal we found that day. Following that, it was all we could do to get him to leave!
Maya as well spent what had to be a half an hour carefully digging around this giant rock she was trying to unearth. Her rationale was sound – that rock was huge and embedded in the dirt; clearly no one had looked beneath it yet. After such a long while, she finally asked for some help. I walked over and thanks to all the work she had done to move earth out of the way, I was able to pick the big rock up and move it aside for her. Sure enough, she then found several large and beautiful quartz crystals in her pile. And being Maya, when it was finally time for us to leave, she showed another family the crystals she had found and pointed them to her “very good digging spot.” She didn’t want it to go to waste.
All told, I think we were there between four and five hours. I don’t want to know how many pounds of rock we wound up hauling back to Texas, but I’d betcha it was in triple digit territory. Even a few weeks later, we still haven’t managed to root through them all and wash the red clay off of them. I will say, for me especially, washing them was like digging for treasure all over again. The shiny stuff is hard to find for all the dirt, so it’s fun to see what you uncover once you rinse the stones and leave them to dry in the sun.
We grabbed a quick takeout lunch and headed back to the rental house to clean up a bit. Then we headed back into Hot Springs so Maya and Ian could acquire the junior ranger badges they had become so enamored with the previous day (the nice park ranger did her level best to get the kids to vow to clean their rooms and do their homework, but our little pirates were having none of it). After that, the parents secured half-growlers of a couple of Superior Bathhouse Brewery’s finest, plus one of root beer for the kids. Then we went up into the Hot Springs Mountain Tower, a 216-foot tall tower with an observation deck, for a bit of history and a good long look at the area around us. It’s pretty there, and it was fun to see Bathhouse Row from up high! We all took the elevator up. The kids and I elected to walk down the outdoor stairs so we could look around outside while we walked. And we arrived at the bottom at about the same time as Sean!
Then we went to a local pizza joint called SQZBX. The decor in this place was amazing. A variety of musical instruments and implements had been repurposed into light fixtures, room dividers, etc. We were tucked into a booth and set up with beers and drinks and an order of garlic knots. Pizza came quickly thereafter. Solid beer, solid food, wonderful surroundings and service. The kids were pretty bouncy and chatty, like always, and the nice lady taking care of us at one point grinned and exclaimed, “Your kids are so expressive!” I’ve never heard anyone call our kids loud and maybe even obnoxious in such a nice way!
And finally, at long last, we had an evening swim in the lake. We discovered there was no ladder off the dock. Not such a problem when getting in; a little trickier when climbing out. We hung out in the water with the geese and watched the sun sink down and the sky again turn orangey pink. After our swim, the kids tried to clean some of their fancy rocks, but that chore lost its luster pretty quickly.
Day 3 – Kayaking and Garvan Gardens
When we were looking at houses on the lake way back in the spring, there were lots of options right on the water, and several people had kayaks and paddle boats and those sorts of things at their property for the renters to use. By the time we got around to finding a place and booking it, there were none of those left and even for the place we wound up staying, we paid more than we would have had we secured a place earlier. Alas.
That’s how we found ourselves at Young’s Yaks, renting a couple of double kayaks so we could paddle around Lake Hamilton for a couple hours. We had zero problems renting from them. A nice lady was there to meet us at the designated time. The kayaks were all lined up and ready for action. There were life vests all ready for us.
Maya and I loaded into one kayak, and Sean and Ian into another. Maya couldn’t settle down and just wanted to paddle, paddle, paddle. Ian didn’t understand why we had to be in the boat instead of in the water. He tried to paddle one, decided that was for the birds, and mostly either rested or complained the rest of the time. Kids aside, paddling around in the big lake was peaceful. We did eventually find a little pebbly pocket beach were we could park our kayaks and mess around in the water and cool off a bit. That seemed to perk them up some. We also swapped kids after that, just for the variety.
That afternoon, we went to Garvan Woodland Gardens. What’s interesting about this place is that on its surface, it’s a botanical garden, but what drew me here were the interesting structures on site. The Evans Tree House was the big draw for the kids. They could climb around freely in its multi-storied structure, climbing nets and peeping out windows.
The Anthony Chapel was another must-see for us while at Garvan. It’s a glass-walled chapel, not unlike the Wayfarer’s Chapel we had seen in California in the spring. The structure was gorgeous and the diminished division between inside and outside spaces was decidedly serene.
The Garvan Pavilion was another highlight of the visit. The open air pavilion had an interesting glass and steel faceted skylight roof, almost like a surprise. Normal enough looking pavilion from the outside. Walk in and look up and there it is!
Maya and Ian delighted in streams filled with colorful beachballs. They saw little fairy houses (including a replica of the Anthony Chapel) and a miniature railway. They got to see a gorgeous peacock doing his best to pretend people didn’t exist. (Probably the heat was getting to me, but that peacock’s random desperate yelps started to occupy the same highly-amused space in my brain as the screaming goats in “Thor: Love and Thunder.”) They saw squirrels and dragonflies, climbed rocks, and ate ice cream. All in all, a good visit.
We did a hasty stopover in Hot Springs to get Maya a souvenir she’d been craving (a stuffed pileated woodpecker that’s she’s since named Strawberry – we saw one of these in real life at Garvan), refilled the kids’ half-growler with root beer, and loaded up on allllllllll the taffy from Colonial Candy Corner. We went back to our rental house to unwind a bit and maybe have a swim before dinner.
It had been thundering off and on and threatening to rain while we were at Garvan earlier. Not but a few minutes passed after we got back to the rental house before the winds picked up and the skies opened. I went ahead and brought in all our swim clothes from the balcony, where I’d left them to dry the day before. When the wind kept increasing in intensity, I thought maybe I’d bring the flip flops and water shoes in, just in case. Not long after, I saw Maya’s dragon floaty pushing a metal chair across the deck, and so I wrestled that giant wet dragon float through the door too! The storm was so fierce, it actually ripped soffit out from the ceiling above the porch. It was crazy!
While all this was going on, the kids were availing themselves of the jetted bathtubs at the house, or trying to at any rate. There was one upstairs, where the kids slept and one downstairs on the same floor as the main bedroom and the kitchen. The upstairs jets were … vigorous. They were so vigorous, in fact, that they shot clean out of the tub and walloped unsuspecting artwork on the walls. So only Maya got to have her whirlpool bath that evening.
With the kids duly bathed, we drove into town to meet one of my coworkers and his wife – Mike and Kelly – for dinner at The Purple Cow. Can you believe they agreed to hang out with us? I tried to warn them.
This grape-purple diner-esque establishment delivered. Dinner was delicious – burgers, shakes, patty melts. I had a rueben. The kids enjoyed their milkshakes and the company was top notch. We did, however, start the unfortunate trend on this vacation of forgetting to snap photos with the friends we saw on this trip. Bad introverts!
Day 4 – Bill Clinton Library, Little Rock Fireworks
The next day, 4th of July, we were heading to Little Rock. We spent the morning packing, including all those many pounds of rocks, and said goodbye to our underused house on the lake. Since Ian’s jetted tub had misbehaved the night before, we did let him have a turn in the downstairs one before we left.
Little Rock is only about an hour away from Hot Springs, so even with our leisurely departure, we arrived at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum fairly early in the day. The kids were supremely underwhelmed … until we all made the happy discovery that there was a “Dinosaur Explorer” exhibit there for the summer. It features a bunch of animatronic dinosaurs and a few little activities to (try to) keep the kids engaged.
We more or less started and ended our museum visit with dinosaurs. We started out right away wandering through an area featuring some of the animatronic dinosaurs. Within this part of the museum was a neat little area where the kids could grab a coloring sheet and decorate their own dinosaurs. Then they scanned the sheet in and their very own dinosaurs, sometimes multiple copies, would be digitally rendered and could join the other dinosaurs already living their best lives on the room’s giant TV screen.
After the fun dinosaurs, it was snoozeville all the way as we walked through exhibits showing Clinton’s early years, things he accomplished, and displays showing what life as president was like. One of the docents had told the kids there were records of his daily schedules while in office, and that they should go try to find out what the president was up to on their birthdays. I didn’t think to look, but Sean and the kids thumbed through some of those schedules. Sean told me it was crazy. The president’s time was fully scheduled, morning to night, sometimes in 10- and 15-minute chunks.
We visited a full-scale replica of the White House cabinet room where we tried to explain a bit how the cabinet members work with the president. We had our photos taken in a full-scale replica of the Oval Office as it was during Clinton’s presidency. The kids both confirmed that they have zero interest in being president.
Maya and Ian wanted to know if Clinton was good or bad. Their world is still pretty black and white like that. We tried very hard to explain that it’s hard to categorize him in that way. Better to look at the things he tried to accomplish and the decisions that he made – good or bad – and decide on balance if he did a good job. It didn’t really look like it landed, but at least we’re planting seeds.
The Little Rock Nine are prominently featured at the museum. These are the kids who, following a 1954 US Supreme Court ruling that segregated schools were illegal, in 1957 finally became the first black students to go to Little Rock Central High School. It didn’t happen overnight and they had to face the state’s National Guard, a whole mob of angry townsfolk, and eventually had to be escorted by soldiers from both the National Guard and the US Army in order to attend classes. High school students! I can’t even imagine.
I’m not sure how much the concept of racism has been discussed with the kids at school, but they seemed completely baffled by the notion that just because one kid had darker skin than another, they’d be forced to go to a different school. Maya pronounced it “stupid.” When we tried to explain that racism still exists today, she just couldn’t believe it.
Afterward at Ian’s request, we took a stroll partway across the Clinton Presidential Park Bridge. From there we got a good view of the interesting architecture of the Clinton Library. It’s a giant, cantilevered, naturally lit space, and it seems weirdly at home nestled into its nook along the Arkansas River.
Eventually hunger won, and we left the museum to eat at Flying Fish. They had a huge wall of fake fish that appear to have been decorated and donated over the years. Were they all Big Mouth Billy Bass? I’ll never know. The fried seafood and cajun dishes were solid. I think Ian was less thrilled with his chicken fingers, but sometimes chicken fingers are like that.
Loaded to the gills (ha!), we made our way to our Little Rock hotel and relaxed a bit. I took the kids to the hotel pool for a while and let them run out some of their energy.
We enjoyed a superb dinner at Lost Forty Brewing, which was within walking distance of our hotel. I think I’m the only one who had a beer – something called Tropical Confusion, which was divine. The kids shared a cheese pizza, and Sean and I split a Firestarter, which featured Italian sausage, pickled Calabrian chiles, and a light, tomatoey drizzle. It was even good cold the next day!
That evening, we made the short trek across the river to the North Shore Riverwalk Park in North Little Rock. This was an excellent location (thanks for the advice, Joe)! We started out sitting up on the hillside, but as fireworks time drew closer, we sidled down to the riverside fence to have an unobstructed view of the festivities.
The kids enjoyed the spectacle, though Maya struggled some with the fireworks smell. After it was all said and done, we had an easy walk back to the car, but thanks to random road closures and heavy traffic a nearly hour-long drive back to our hotel!
Day 5 – Driving to Branson, Dolly’s Stampede
Since we had been up so late the night before, we all slept in a bit. By the time we were done packing and showering, we decided to just drive straight on to our hotel in Branson rather than stopping by any of the places I’d halfway considered visiting en route (Mount Magazine, Eureka Springs, Table Rock Lake).
We stayed at Lodge of the Ozarks. The kids ooed and aahed over the big open entry area, and the room we stayed in was large and comfortable for our family of four. Our hotel was on the main drag through tourist Branson, and it’s absolutely bonkers. It reminded me in a jarring, not particularly pleasant way of Gatlinburg. Tourist attraction after tourist attraction lined the strip, each competing for most visual zing. Maya and Ian, being 10 and 8 respectively, were in love and excitedly chattered about all the the things they might cajole us into doing.
Our next day would promise to be very busy and tiring though, so we rested a while before that evening’s fun – Dolly’s Stampede! We went early so that we could check out the Horse Walk. The performing horses are all lined up in their stables for folks to walk along and visit. Ian was very excited about the horses and studiously photographed each one.
The show itself was pleasant enough. The food was really good and there was an insane amount – soup, corn on the cob, a whole (small) chicken, some pork. The show was about what you’d expect. Horses and riders doing tricks, some folks in spangles and sequins, some folks in 1800s period garb. They fashioned it as a competition between the North and the South (like the Civil War?!?), each side rooting for its set of competitors.
We saw pig races and a buffalo stampede. A comedy magic act broke up things in the middle of the show. There was a lot going on and the kids seemed to really enjoy themselves.
Day 6 – Silver Dollar City
The next day’s event was our reason for driving all the way to north Arkansas and edging up into southern Missouri: Silver Dollar City! After cooking in 100 degree heat all June and continuing to cook a bit so far during our Arkansas trip, we were delighted that the highs this day would only be in the 80s. Hooray! We started our morning with a delightful buffet breakfast at Molly’s Mill Restaurant. They set me up with good strong coffee and the kids got to eat all the bacon a kid could ever hope for (we made them eat other stuff too).
Our first ride of the day was Powder Keg. This coaster features a compressed air launch – a first for us! I just looked it up, that ride goes from 0 to 53 miles per hour in 2.8 seconds. The feeling was definitely different from a linear induction type launch. If felt so fast, literally breathtaking. Now, you’d think that we’d have learned not to go hardcore thriller as our first ride of the day, though obviously we haven’t. Ian may have been a little rattled when he got off the ride, but he claimed it was fun.
We next visited Fire in the Hole. This ride, originally opened in 1972, is going to be shut down after this season. Maya, who feels a sense of loss at just about everything that ends, quizzed one of the park hosts mercilessly about why the ride was closing (old and costly to maintain, waning in popularity). The story is that you’re part of the volunteer fire brigade that has to deal with fires the Bald Knobbers had set. One of the characters you meet on the ride is Red Flanders, hanging out in his red long johns. Maya left with a T-shirt that says on one side, “Red Flanders, you come back in here and put on your pants!” and on the other side says, “Well Sadie, I ain’t got no pants no more. The dang bald knobbers stole ’em!”
We rode a coaster called Wildfire and a log flume ride called American Plunge, wherein the adults got thoroughly soaked. Next was a ride we were all looking forward to – Time Traveler. The unique thing about this one – beyond its cool steam punk aesthetic – is that the ride vehicle spins with the loops and curves of the coaster. It makes for some pretty weird ride dynamics. Sometimes you’re facing up, sometimes down, sometimes spinning a bit, sometimes still. We all loved it; however, each ride is different, and while the first run through didn’t bother Sean with his occasional vertigo issues, the second run did.
Sean and the kids rode a coaster called Thunderation. Owing to my screwed up spine, these days, I try to avoid the rougher rides and Sean had read that this one was maybe a bit abusive to its riders. (As he’s explained it to me – it has a tubular steel track, but Arrow, the company who designed it, didn’t use computers to aid in design, so the curve transitions are really rough.) Ian seemed genuinely bothered that I wouldn’t be riding with them, but I gave him a job – assess the ride and let me know if I can ride along if they want to go a second time. With that task in mind, he seemed less upset. Afterward both kids assured me that it was good that I had avoided it. I think even Maya wished she’d skipped it.
We rode rides and ate food and did very little watching of musical acts and experiencing the talents of the various 1800s-themed craft demonstrations. The park was pleasant to experience though. Operators were all friendly and it was clean. The theming was fun and consistent throughout the park. We enjoyed milk shakes and ice cream at Hannah’s later in the day when we needed to sit and cool off.
Here’s a fun, you’re-not-so-young-any-more discovery. Toward the end of our day, the kids wanted to “marathon” a couple of the coasters. Which is to say, they wanted to get in line, ride the ride, and then get in line and immediately ride it again. The lines were short enough that there wasn’t a lot of down time in between those iterations. I and I think to a lesser degree Sean, both experienced a little bit of … i don’t know … head spinning wobbliness after doing that a few times. The kids seemed unbothered. I decided to sit a couple of the rides out for that reason. We love roller coasters and thrill rides, and it’s so fun getting to do these things with the kids. Hopefully this isn’t the beginning of the end of that.
The park closes pretty early, so we had time that evening to hang out at the hotel pool. It was every bit the madhouse you’d expect in a place like Branson, but the kids had fun and it was a nice way to cool off after a busy day.
Day 7 – Snake World, Turpentine Creek, and Crystal Bridges
We tried something different on this vacation. We let the kids dig through Arkansas tourism information and choose some things they specifically would like to do. Ian chose a place called Snake World because we thought he’d probably get to actually hold snakes there. And Maya went with the Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge – a big cat rescue facility. We were in north Arkansas, so I personally wanted to visit the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. And we would do all these things before driving back down to Little Rock for the night!
After packing and a quick hotel breakfast, we high-tailed it down to Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge. We needed to make it there in time for their first tour of the day at 9:00, and we did it! We spent the first hour riding around the grounds in an open air tram, learning about the various animals they cared for and where they came from. Lions, tigers, bobcats, servals, and cougars are cared for there, as well as some bears and a whole slew of hybrids. They had ligers (cross between a lion and a tiger, of course); and here I thought Napoleon Dynamite was making them up! Sometimes you could see the creatures well, and other times not so much.
Maya and Ian seemed to enjoy the visit, though Maya was saddened by some of the stories about the animals’ condition when they were surrendered to the wildlife refuge. Ian happily snapped photos during the trip, so he was well occupied. We were delighted by a white tiger enjoying a bath in his giant trough and by a tiger cub who was merrily dismantling a big box they’d given him to play with. It sounded like the animals were well cared for, and we were told all our admission fee went back into the refuge, so it suited Maya’s sensibilities on multiple levels.
After wandering around the grounds a bit on our own, hoping to spot a few of the creatures we had missed, we all hopped in the car and drove as quickly as we dared to visit Snake World, which opened at 11. The road was very, very curvy, and while we know to give Maya Dramamine since she definitely gets car sick, the curves on this one even made Ian sick. Whoops. Now we know.
Snake World can best be described as a roadside attraction. When we rolled up on it, we were a little unsure of what we had gotten ourselves into. The building and grounds seemed a bit careworn and haphazard. Plus, it was closed, and despite knocking and calling both numbers on the sign on the door, I had roused no one to come talk to us. (This was after I had gotten ahold of them the previous week to ensure I knew how tours worked and were scheduled and that sort of thing.) We decided to go back into town and eat lunch and mull it over. Eventually I got a text from them that said they’d had a doctor’s appointment and would be back at 1.
While we ate, I fussed about whether we should go back or just skip it and move on. Ian was absolutely distraught. He was so upset about possibly missing it that he nearly came to tears. And so it was that we made our way back. As promised, Melina was there to meet us and show us her creatures. The poor lady had had something bad happen to her knee, so she was hobbling around trying to show us snakes with one arm on a walking stick, but she was as pleasant and informative as a person could have wanted.
She showed the kids how the same kind of snake could be colored very differently if they were from different parts of the country due to adaptation to their environment. She showed them the ocular ridges on vipers. She let them hold so many different nonvenomous snakes and a couple of different bearded dragons. Ian was in heaven. Except – there were spiders. There were some rubber ones here and there, ha ha, but there were also webs constructed in quiet corners and Ian was not impressed.
We also saw a bunch of venomous snakes hanging out in well locked and labeled enclosures. We were never in any danger, and it was interesting getting such an up close view of live specimens of snakes we’d otherwise avoid. I bet we were there well over an hour listening to her talk about her various creatures, and it was time well spent, especially for our budding herpetologist.
We then made the trek over to Bentonville so we could visit the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. The place is absolutely gorgeous, and general admission is free! Funded largely by the Walton family (of Wal-Mart fame), this sprawling complex occupies about 120 acres.
We saw untold quantities of paintings, sculptures, and mixed media installations from artists spanning multiple decades. Like many of the places we’ve been, they have no issue with confronting our not-too-distant racist past … and maybe some of our racist present too. But they also celebrate form and light, conflict and resolution. There’s a lot to take in. We saw Chihuly glass, toured a restored and relocated Frank Lloyd Wright house, examined strange and interesting outdoor sculptures. We even got to see another of Yayoi Kusama’s Infiniti Rooms – this one titled, “My Heart is Dancing Into the Universe.” It was a good visit.
Days 8 and 9 – Kid Transfer, Dinner with Friends, Back to TX
In the morning, it was all about packing up the kids’ suitcases and backpacks and leaving all our grown up stuff sit. This summer, we were again trying something new. Maya and Ian would be spending the next week at Lolli and Pop’s house in Alabama! (We had planned to do this with the Missouri grandparents as well, but needed to cancel for some medical issues.)
And so it was that we drove to Memphis, kids packed for handoff to their grandparents. It felt weird. We really don’t spend a lot of time away from the kids, and we’ve never been apart for an entire week. I worried about how well the kids would behave, whether we were burdening their grandparents and they were just too nice to say so, and how much the kids might miss us (spoiler: not even a little bit).
We had lunch with the Maya and Ian in Memphis at a place called A&R Bar-B-Que, and it was glorious. Sean read that the thing to order was a rib tip sandwich, and so we each got that, plus slaw of course. Let me tell you a secret – this was effing delicious but impossible to eat. Were we to find ourselves in Memphis again ordering from A&R, we’d either get a plate of ribs or a pulled pork sandwich instead. Maya and Ian had chicken fingers – I can’t even.
We had a delightful cookie treat at Makeda’s afterward. Then we met Lolli and Pop in a strip-mall parking lot and handed off the kids and their luggage. Lolli and Pop handed us a mysterious large box. More on that later. After lots of hugs and maybe a little fussing from me, we relinquished our children and made the quiet drive back to Little Rock.
That evening, we met our college friend Joe and his partner Keith for dinner and drinks at Big Orange Burger. The cocktails were delicious, the burgers hit the spot (mine had pimento cheese), and the company was fantastic! It was so nice to be able to catch up with an old friend on the preceding twenty-some years. Keith is an Arkansas native, and Joe has lived in the area for quite a long while. They gave us excellent advice on what to do and see and where to eat before and during our trip. And we again captured no photos with our friends. Sigh.
For example, at their repeated insistence, we stopped by Blackberry Market for breakfast the next day. Sean and I had buttery, crumbly scones and I had the honey lavender latte. Given my love of coffee, I rarely order anything as diluted as a latte, but the gentle honey and lavender flavors would have been lost to the coffee in anything less milky. A solid recommendation!
The drive home was long. There were heavy rains on the way out of Arkansas, somewhere near Fate, TX we were held up by some kind of police action – we saw guns drawn, and heading into Austin traffic was as sluggish as always. But eventually we made it to our 100 degree heat, our crispy, half-dead yard, and our quiet kidless house.
And what was in that large, mysterious box Sean had received from Lolli and Pop? It was his first saxaphone. They had it fashioned into a sort of amplifier for an iphone. Neat!
