I’d been feeling a bit overwhelmed by what would be my last trip post, if I kept the same pattern of two nights, and then I said to myself, this is MY blog, nobody except me and my mom reads it, so why not break the last post up?
So far I’ve told you about Little Rock, Hot Springs, and our wonderful cabin in the Ozarks near the town of Pettigrew. Our next airbnb was south of Fayetteville where we would be spending our final two nights of vacation, but I wanted to make a stop en route.
I like seeking out National Park Sites, not for a bucket list or anything, but because they are often well done and worth visiting, and I enjoy learning about history as we travel. I noticed that Fort Smith National Historic Site wasn’t too far out of the way, and I’d also found a blogger who really loved the town of Fort Smith, so we decided it was worth a short visit.
I wasn’t sure if our google directions already took the gravel roads into account when telling us how long it would take to get there, but it turned out they did. It took about 1 1/2 hours to get to Fort Smith, so we rolled in somewhere between 10 and 11. Fort Smith is located right on the western border of Arkansas by the Arkansas River, and our directions had us briefly in Oklahoma, which was very exciting.
That is Oklahoma.
The Visitor’s Center was closed due to COVID but there was a ranger sitting outside with a table of brochures and happy to answer any questions. I’m sorry we missed whatever museum would have been inside, but he said otherwise, just walk around and it is all well marked.
Various pictures from the route. There was a bit about Fort Smith itself, fighting against Native Americans and stealing their land and the Trail of Tears, things about the Civil War, a supplies area, and a garden.
It seemed that the Fort was important in its history in regards to the Civil War and the Trail of Tears. Some of the information we read was a little confusing out of context, for instance we read something about the soldiers at the Fort abandoning the town when South Carolina seceding from the Union, but then later referring to the soldier being there fighting…so maybe that visitor’s center museum would have been helpful? Or a book I suppose.
In any case, it was a nice place to walk around. There was an extra long walk one could take down by the river, which added about 3/4 mile (I am just trying to remember this without research, so I could be wrong). We enjoyed a nice walk along the Arkansas River. We’d had dinner along the Arkansas River and crossed it a few times by foot in Little Rock and now we were seeing it again on the other side of the state.
It was a lovely, shaded walk on a hot day.The sign was at the edge of the property on the walk, not near the parking lot. Does that mean that the US is becoming a more pedestrian country?
After about an hour, we had seen all we could see. There weren’t proper restrooms at the site, so we figured we’d go and find lunch and bathrooms at the same place.
We drove down a very quaint, historic looking downtown strip to find a place called A.J.’s Oyster House. It was perfect: friendly, cool, had bathrooms, and we enjoyed some oysters too. I got the Oyster Po’boy and we split some Oysters Rockefeller.
After lunch we decided to pop back over to the downtown area to walk around, but I got distracted by a sign about Victorian Homes, and we ended up walking by some of them instead. They all seemed to be law firms now.
We couldn’t check into our airbnb until 3 pm and it was an hour away, so after our stroll we got coffees and relaxed at the Fort Smith Coffee Company (super cool place!) until it was a reasonable time to take off.
Keep your eyes out for the final, or who knows, installment of the trip to Arkansas!
So far at this point in our trip we have visited Little Rock and Hot Springs. When planning the trip I studied the map of Arkansas and tried to decide what would be fun. I knew I wanted us to visit the Fayetteville/Bentonville area last, so I thought, hmm, how about heading into the mountains for a bit? I searched on airbnb for various rural places, and finally found a wonderful cabin near the town of Pettigrew.
The host had warned me ahead of time about a few things: 1) that you probably wanted an SUV or something along those lines for the 5 miles of gravel roads plus their driveway 2) there was no phone service or reliable internet and 3) they had dogs that would be visiting. Oh, and 4) that you needed to bring all your supplies because the nearest grocery story was 4 miles away.
There was also a stern warning about 5) not taking a certain route that google might suggest you take because the road would be impassable at a point and you might get stuck and damage your car.
So, with all of those warnings in mind, it sounded great. 5 miles from a paved road, awesome! Beautiful pictures on airbnb! No phone service for two days so nobody could bug me about violin lessons! Remote location! Hiking! Dogs and chickens and a river! And, since this is important on airbnb as well, a thoughtful and communicative host!
It was about a 3 hour drive from Hot Springs to the cabin. Along the way we stopped at a Walmart to get groceries and stopped at a Mexican restaurant in Russellville for lunch. We carefully watched the roads as we got close and initially missed our first turn off onto the gravel roads, but it was easy to backtrack.
We’d been driving on various winding highways up until this point, but it is difficult to describe in words how interesting and unlike what we were used to it was like driving on these dirt/gravel roads in the Ozarks. We were surrounded by trees at times, with a creek even going across the road here and there. We would see a farmhouse here and there, some in ruins, some that looked like people still or recently lived there. I’d say about half of the houses we saw looked abandoned and the other half looked lived in. We saw cows and ponds. We kept crossing over the Little Mulberry Creek, which was fairly wide at points (for this there were various types of bridges.)
I took this picture from the car as we went over a bridge.This was the side view for one of the creeks that went over the road.This was what the road looked like for much of the jounrney.
As we drove along our directions had given us various landmarks so we knew we were on the right route. We eventually turned onto a smaller, less well-maintained road, and then headed up a very steep, rocky driveway to get to the cabin.
The host normally lived in a house right by the cabin but she wasn’t there while we were there, which was a little scary at times (so desolate! so thinking of serial murderers!) but also very lovely for privacy. She had mentioned that someone would be by feeding the animals, but I didn’t realize that meant her dogs…
We found the cabin easily and parked in front of it, and then a dog came up. I was nervous at first, but it turned out that her two dogs were the most friendly and welcoming dogs you’d ever meet! The information in the cabin told us their names were Lola and Neena and they pretty much hung out with us the entire time we were there!
As we were getting the car unloaded and getting settled, we kept hearing a strange noise. I thought maybe it was just the screen door being weird (I don’t know!) but it turned out it was a couple of free range chickens. The dogs and the chickens didn’t seem to bother one another!
Anyway, we got settled, and then decided to take a walk. The dogs led the way down the driveway and then we all went to the creek, which was right near the driveway-the road we turned off of to get to the driveway continued a short distance and then dead-ended at the creek, though google maps showed it continuing across. Perhaps there was another road across the creek, or perhaps in very low water one could drive a certain kind of vehicle across, but there was no obvious way to do so, so that would be another piece of bad advice from google.
The chickensThe creek
The dogs led us to the creek where they did a little swimming. We poked around a bit and then decided to just walk up the road a bit. We passed some other houses and saw a few people out with their dogs, which was a bit awkward: we assumed since these dogs were completely free range that the closest neighbors knew them and that the dogs got along, but it seemed that neither of those was true. We didn’t have leashes or anything, but the neighbors seemed to be very wary with their dogs. As I said to one person, I was sorry, but these dogs weren’t even our dogs!
After walking a bit we headed back to make a fire and have dinner. The cabin had modern amenities and a small kitchenette (a two burner stove, coffeemaker, microwave, and small fridge), with lots of pots and pans, flatware, dishes and such to choose from, but there was also a firepit outside and some firewood to use. We thought a fire would be lovely since it was getting cooler! Louie worked on that while I made a shrimp with couscous dinner inside, and then we hung out a bit.
After eating we moved to sit by the fire. It was enjoyable, but the one dog kept getting up and barking into the night, which became a little scary….was there somethign out there? was she hearing things we weren’t? Being so remote, more remote than most of our camping experiences, and having this dog barking like there was danger, was a bit frightening! We decided after awhile to just go to bed, and it was nice and cool and wonderful to snuggle up under the covers.
In the morning we made oatmeal, and then headed out to hike. We decided to do a hike called the Redding -Spy Rock Loop, which was advertised as 8.3 miles and looked to be a good way to spend the day. It was about a 45 minute drive away, which sounds like a lot until you realize that 30 minutes of that is the 5 miles on gravel roads!
It is worth mentioning at this point that the two dogs slept outside our cabin all night, one of them possibly slept underneath it. They were happy to see us in the morning, but a bit harumph-py that we were leaving again.
Another view of the cabinThe creek looked so blue in the sun. It had a cloudy look to it, maybe a sort of mineral.I mentioned cows.
We had a teeny bit of trouble finding where to park, and ended up finding a place that in retrospect we didn’t like as well as our first place, but it was all okay. We loaded up, added copious amounts of bug spray, and headed out.
The hike was perfectly nice. It was a bit swampy at first, so we were glad to gain some elevation. This isn’t a great time of year to hike in Arkansas due to bugs and humidity, though we were quite lucky with the weather not being too hot. The other thing that isn’t as nice is there are very few views as the trees all have their leaves, so you are just doing a lot of walking around in the woods! We had a few trees in the way, including two really big ones and had a couple of tricky diversions due to that. Louie joked he wished he had brought his saw along on the hike to help out more.
The trail was pretty easy to follow however. We were a little disappointed to find there was also a road up to Spy Rock (gravel, yes, but we saw a few vehicles go by) but nonetheless it was a lovely hike.
We took the West Loop first
Eventually we got to Spy Rock where we enjoyed a lovely view and ate our lunch. There was a nearby backcountry camping area for those who like to camp.
There is a waterfall in this picture if you squint.
After lunch, we got on our way again continuing along the east loop of the trail. The description in a book said there would be a variety of waterfalls, so we looked forward to that. It was a nice hike down, and the waterfalls were small but still a bit of fun along the way. I was a little worried about a tricky water crossing but nothing was too tough. The last mile or so of the trail was pretty rocky under foot and got to be pretty annoying, but before too long we found ourselves back at the car!
Louie ended up with a bunch of ticks on one of his socks, but I seemed okay. He tends to attract more ticks for whatever reason and I tend to attract more mosquitoes.
I don’t think we saw anybody on the hike, unless I am forgetting something.
After the hike, we decided to take the long route back to the cabin: there was another route in from the north side, so we drove around a bit to see the area more. There are some great windy roads, some tiny towns, and then about 7 miles of dirt roads (we drove through Pettigrew and then into the county road territory.) It was better from the other way but nice to see more of the land. One dog came out to visit in the road (actually this was a common thing, it happened at least twice) and we had to proceed cautiously while he said hello to the car and smelled it. Louie did an impression of the dog saying “Hi folks, we don’t get many visitors out this way!”
We finally found our way back to the cabin and I was beat! I showered and then spent the rest of the afternoon reading. Louie headed back down to the creek with the dogs and had a nice time taking pictures of them in the water.
Just some random pictures of the view from the porch, the chickens, and then Louie petting the two dogs. They were sweet dogs!
We made (bean) burgers on the fire that night and hung out outside for a bit, but were tired early and so didn’t stay up too long. The next morning we were headed to Fort Smith and then to Fayetteville to our next airbnb.
The one dog (Lola) was again barking at nothing or everything, and we thought maybe she was being proactive and warning any potential intruders of her presence. Occasionally the second dog (Neena) would join her and they would run off into the woods together…who knows if they found something, or if it was just the chicken, or who knows. Honestly after a point the dogs were a bit annoying which led to our decision to pack it in early, but we were pretty tired anyway!
It was a wonderful place to stay, and there was much more to do in the area as far as hiking and such if we stayed another few nights, so I highly recommend this cabin!
In the morning we packed up, said our goodbyes to the dogs (Louie was particularly sad, and did end up walking down to the creek with them one last time) and then headed out on the dirt roads again. We had just under a 2 hour drive to our next stop and wanted to get a good start on the day.
This is part 2 of our Arkansas Post-Covid Vaccination Trip. Go here for part 1, Two Nights in Little Rock.
It’s just about 1 hour drive from Little Rock to Hot Springs, so we did that rather easily. We couldn’t check into our Airbnb until after 3 pm, so we figured we would hit up the National Park first and see what there was to do and get the lay of the land.
Hot Springs National Park is unusual in that it is in the middle of the town of Hot Springs. Hot Springs is an interesting place, for sure, but it also is one of those places that you know has seen better days.
In a nutshell, there are a variety of bathhouses that are from the early 1900’s that have been preserved. The bathhouses were built to use the hot water from the hot springs in order to (the idea goes) improve people’s health. People came from far and wide to take baths and steam in the hot water fresh from the springs in Hot Springs. As time went on, this sort of thing fell out of fashion, and eventually the Park Service decided to preserve the houses for future generations. Only one bathhouse has been functioning the entire time and you can take baths there just like people did back in the day. Other houses have different purposes: a museum, a modern day spa, a store, a brewery, a small hotel, and more. They are all on one side of the street, called Bathhouse Row. On the other side of the street, there are all manner of tourist shops and restaurants, none of which are particularly good (yes, I’m a restaurant snob, but I also don’t need to buy any rocks on my vacation!) and the whole places feels a bit sad. Oh, and there are 4 lanes of traffic whizzing by with limited places to cross.
The National park is great! The surrounding infrastructure needs help. In addition to the bathhouses there is a hill with a grand promenade you can walk on, a variety of scenic drives through the surrounding mountains and quite a few hiking trails. The Park Service also did a great job with a bathhouse museum.
Things that could be improved: more crosswalks, perhaps less lanes to cross—why not make it a two lane road, widen sidewalks on both sides, more crosswalks (did I mention more crosswalks?) That would make it easier to go back and forth and ideally attract slightly more people to improve the eating establishments? Then, the brewery wasn’t open at all one of the days we were there: if you want this to be a tourist destination, day of the week must be irrelevant! And the bathhouse that functions like the old-timey bathhouses, Buckstaff Baths, are nearly impossible to reach via the phone. They need to work on that and answer the phones! Anyway, those are my actual suggestions…I also had other ideas like, add a herd of buffalo…I suppose part of the real problem is that visiting ARKANSAS just isn’t as exciting as visiting Colorado, Yellowstone, or France, and we now have easy access to hot tubs all over the country. But you know what, as you’ll see reading this and my other posts, it was a wonderful place to spend a week of vacation!
Anyway, back to the recap! We found parking easily and headed to Bathhouse Row. We arrived on Memorial Day, and it seemed pretty busy. The sun was shining and it was warm but not too hot. Perfect weather!
A view of bathhouse row. The buildings are each amazing in their own ways, beautiful architecture in a variety of styles.
The Fordyce Bathhouse was our first stop, as there was all manner of terrific information and brochures outside, and a wonderful museum about the history of the bathhouses inside.
I love when Parks do this: just give you ideas of what to do. I usually plan our activities in advance, but sometimes on a longer trip it is impossible to get it all ready and it’s so cool to be able to show up to a visitor’s center and say, okay, here are the cool things to do!
I should digress and say that I had been to Hot Springs before, as part of a road trip in 1989 with my family. I kept a diary of the trip, and gave four pages to Hot Springs. During that visit it seemed we camped at the Gulpha Gorge Campground and went to the museum as well. You can attempt to decipher my handwriting if you want: I did a great job describing the steps of the bath and also documented everything I ate. It starts on June 25.
We went into the museum, which was one way due to COVID. Masks were ambiguously required, so we wore them. It was neat to see all the steps of the baths, especially because…one of the activities we did have planned was a “traditional bathing package” at Buckstaff Baths the next morning.
The men’s floor had some elaborate sculptures and decor!
Where the water came in originally…supposedly…
After the museum, we walked around a bit, just to get a feel of things.
There are really quite a few trails. We followed some short ones, and then decided to do one of the scenic drives, the one around Hot Springs Mountain.
There were a few nice views, and at one point we decided to park and go off on foot on the Hot Springs Mountain Trail. It wasn’t terribly scenic (too many trees!) but it was very nice to walk around on. And it was very pretty!
There is a lookout tower on top of the mountain that you can go up for a price. We decided not to, but I’m sure the view is even nicer up there.
When you get to the end of the scenic drive, you go right by a spring that you can drink from. We filled up some water bottles, and yes, the water WAS very nice! Some of it is hot, some of it isn’t, and it all seemed to taste very clean.
We checked into our Airbnb next. The description said you could walk to the bathhouses, but a few commenters thought that wasn’t the best idea. I had thought we would, but we decided against it…it was a long walk through a less exciting neighborhood. However, it was a perfectly lovely place to stay and was a very short drive from the action.
We decided to have dinner at the brewery since it wasn’t open the next day. We had eaten a very early lunch so we were hungry earlier, and off we went.
The Superior Brewery is in an old bathhouse, which means there are old tile floors everywhere. It was pretty cool, even though we were sort of put in a less exciting room that we’d hoped for. We split a beer sampler and each got a sandwich. It was a fun time!
As we are old people, we went home after dinner and a short walk, and ended up watching TV.
The next morning we woke up to get ready for our baths at Buckstaff Baths. We ended up being ready to go early, so we drove up the other mountain, West Mountain, first, and just stopped at a few viewpoints. It was a rainy/foggy morning.
It was easy to find parking in town at a huge garage which was free and conveniently located. We were still early, so we walked around a bit more and looked at the various nooks and crannies of Bathhouse Row.
Our appointment for Buckstaff Baths was at 10:30 am, and they meant it, not a minute early. So we waited a few minutes, and then everybody who had the 10:30 am time waited in line to get our hands sanitized and fill out forms. Like, literally, they kept wiping down the table in between parties…I totally get businesses are having COVID protocols, but this would all be done if we all just got vaccinated, or if businesses could say, okay, just show your vaccine card and then we don’t have to pretend that taking your temperature and using hand sanitizer will stop the spread of COVID, when the thing that really stops it is the vaccine some of us have gotten…but I digress.
There are separate men’s and women’s floors, so Louie and I said adieu to each other and went our separate ways. (Pandemic living: it is still often weird not seeing him for a few hours). They take you up an elevator to a row of dressing rooms that look like they are from 1912, which they ARE. Buckstaff Baths has been in continuous operation as a bathhouse since then, with limited remodeling, though it was very clean and well taken care of. You get undressed and put your things in a locker and then the attendant wraps you in a sheet, toga style. You go into the next room and get into a bath (this was all described in my journal entries from 1989), and the water is pretty hot. Your attendant helps you get into the bath (be prepared to be undressed in front of her) and then you relax for 20 minutes. They may bring you hot spring water to drink, and you have a loofah to scrub with if you like.
Next you get out and go to an area with places to lie down, and they put hot towels under you and over you, and you lie there and continue relaxing. They will put a cool towel over your face. Next was the steam cabinet, where you sit in literally a cabinet, but have your head out, and you steam. Then you sit in a sitz bath, which is a tiny bathtub you yes, sit in. For me, all of the things in this paragraph I did wearing a sheet, though not always the same one, but Louie said in the men’s baths they were mostly totally naked for these parts. I suppose they think women are more modest. Lastly is the needle shower, a shower with dozens or perhaps hundreds of little needles of water coming at you from all directions.
After that they might take you to a cooling room, but I went straight into my 20 minute massage, which was part of the “traditional bathing package”. Louie ended up waiting in the cooling room for nearly 30 minutes, so I finished first and waited for him outside.
For obvious reasons I didn’t take any photos in the bathhouse, but it was lots of tile and marble and old timey looking stuff. I loved it and would highly recommend! It is really difficult to get in touch with them though, so plan ahead and keep calling. I think I booked about 6 to 8 weeks in advance, but I don’t know if that is necessary.
After our baths we were quite hungry, but wanted to get out of the downtown area for a bit, so we headed out to a restaurant that was near Lake Hamilton. That restaurant ended up being closed, but we found a nearby Mexican place called Jose’s and had a lovely lunch. We decided to visit Garvin Woodland Gardens next which was about 15 minutes away from the restaurant.
The gardens were really beautiful! They were lush and green and full of plants, well thought out, and wonderful to walk through.
There were various paths and bridges to take. We saw a lovely pond with koi which were fun to watch.
You can see it was rainy looking…we had umbrellas with us, but hoped it would hold off.
The gardens were right next to Lake Hamilton and had a few miles of trails that went further from the visitor’s center.
There was an area called the Children’s Gardens with a cave and a huge wooden structure called the Tree House and other neat stuff. We enjoyed it! This picture is taken from inside the cave.
The Treehouse from outside and from inside.
We decided to extend our walk onto a little connected almost island area which was called the Hixson Nature Preserve. It started raining after we walked for a bit though, but we were glad to have our umbrellas.
Until it started pouring, and then we were glad to be wearing shorts, and finally it was thundering and we were just walking as fast as we could to get back to the regular part of the gardens and ideally some sort of shelter.
Just as we were getting back to the Treehouse area we came across a garden employee driving a golf cart, who informed us that the gardens were closed due to the storm and we should head back to the visitor’s center to either wait it out, or we could ask for a refund. Well, DUH it was storming. What he did not do was offer us a ride back! So we got a little further and there was a pavilion of sorts so we stopped under it to take a little break from the rain, and then finally headed the rest of the way back. We didn’t ask for a refund because we had already seen all of the islands anyway, and so we just left.
The pavilion where we rested, which seems to host events and such. I believe it was called the Garvan Pavilion.
After the garden we both just wanted to be drier, so we headed back to our airbnb and cleaned up. We decided to relax a bit, and after awhile headed out for dinner.
We decided to have dinner at Rolando’s which served South American food. When we first got there it was a bit too crowded, so they told us to come back in 30 minutes. We went to walk around, but popped in at the Hot Springs Winery a few doors down and ended up doing a tasting and then purchasing a few bottles. The employee who helped us was super nice and friendly, and it was a nice thing to do while waiting for dinner.
Dinner was good. At this point it was pouring rain outside so we were just glad to be inside!
But also glad to eat some fish tacos, shrimp quesadillas and drink a couple of margaritas. After dinner we went home and watched TV: we watched Unorthodox on Netflix during this segment of the trip.
The next morning we woke up early due to a rooster crowing. He had been crowing the previous morning, but was extra excited this morning. I forgot to add that there was a stray cat around outside that had had food the first night but none the second night, and she was begging us for food for herself and her two kittens who were nearby. I can’t believe I didn’t a take a picture! Louie was heartbroken because we didn’t have any food, but I assume she will be okay: they all looked pretty well fed, not overly so, but good for feral cats. Hopefully whoever left the food will return, or she’ll make it on her own. (We were unclear by something our host had said, whether he was feeding them or if others were.) We checked out of our place then (which just meant we loaded up and left the key in the lockbox, love it) and had one more luxury planned.
Our airbnb in Hot Springs. It was the middle apartment of a triplex, and while it was nice, it was probably the least interesting place we stayed.
We went to Quapaw Bathhouse next, for the Quapaw package for couples. We had decided to splurge a bit on our vacation as we hadn’t done much of anything all year long. The Quapaw package had a couples bath, a massage, and a foot/scalp massage. We checked in and got changed into robes, and then were taken to our bath. This was a modern bath, a large jacuzzi tub, and we got to spend 20 minutes in it relaxing, then we were given cucumber water and sat around a bit. Next we went to another place to sit around, and finally were taken in for our massages. The massage and foot/scalp massage were one after the other and it was very nice and relaxing. The building was obviously modernized but the area with the baths still had many aspects from the past, but since I was in a robe and didn’t have my phone with me, I didn’t get any pictures either. We both really enjoyed our time at the Quapaw Bathhouse and Spa, but agreed if we had to pick one day, we would do the Buckstaff because it was more unique.
After that, we said goodbye to Hot Springs and headed north. Our next stop was a remote cabin in the Ozarks and was supposed to be about a 3 hour drive, so we planned to arrive by dinner. We had to get some groceries for the cabin, so we stopped at a Walmart about 30 minutes north and then after another hour or so ended up stopping at one more Mexican restaurant for lunch! We decided we had finally gotten caught up on eating at Mexican places after that: we both love Mexican food and hadn’t been to restaurants in so long it seemed like we were making up for lost time, but after the third one in a row we felt satiated, ha!
Let me know if you’ve been to Hot Springs and how your visit compared! Or if now you plan to go to check it out for yourself.
A few years ago we spent a long weekend in Eureka Springs and had a great time, so when I started thinking about post-COVID vaccine trips, I thought of Arkansas. I wanted to go somewhere not too far away, and somewhere that wouldn’t be overwhelmingly busy with tourists, as I knew the more famous places would be slammed with people eager to travel.
I decided to put together an 8 night road trip for Louie and I that hit the best of Arkansas, or at least, 4 different areas for two nights each.
So, we started with two nights in Little Rock, the state capital. I booked an airbnb in downtown for these leg of the trip. We left on a Saturday morning and headed south.
It’s about a 5 1/2 hour drive to Little Rock, and most of it is on state highways. It was interesting to see the little towns along the way and watch the landscape go by.
We stopped at a McDonalds in Arkansas for a late lunch, and were surprised that we couldn’t eat inside the restaurant. (We actually failed to notice that they were closed inside and were about to sit down and eat and they had to tell us that we couldn’t, which was mildly embarrassing). Missouri has been so “open” this whole time with few restrictions and it was odd to think that a neighboring state had some. That being said, few people were wearing masks, including people going into that same McDonalds, so it’s not like Arkansas was doing things better, just different.
Anyway, we got to our airbnb at 3 to check in but due to a mix up had to wait a little longer. We walked over to a nearby coffee shop in the SOMA area called Community Bakery and sat outside to enjoy some coffee and cookies.
The SOMA area was a 5 minute walk from our airbnb, and SOMA just means South Main Street. It was a few blocks with a bunch of restaurants and a few other things to do, and was really cute. We walked around a bit after our coffee and then went to check into our place.
We were staying in a little apartment in a house with a shared kitchen and other shared spaces, but with private areas. It worked out really well and the hostess actually wasn’t even around for the rest of our stay, so we had the place to ourselves at a cheaper rate!
We walked down to the river next, and took an hour or more just looking around, taking pictures, and getting a sense of Little Rock.
There is a park called Riverfront Park right down by the River which has art and playgrounds and other cool stuff to do and look at. You can also bike or walk along the Arkansas River Trail which is a much longer trail.
We had dinner reservations for a place called Brave New Restaurant, so after awhile we cleaned up and headed there. This wasn’t our first dinner out after getting vaccinated, but it was our first fancy dinner, and I was really looking forward to it! Though it was a bit chilly we sat outside on the patio overlooking the Arkansas River. It was absolutely beautiful as the sun went down!
The food was excellent too: oysters, salad, trout…it was all delicious and well prepared. The chef, Peter Brave, kept coming around to check on all of the diners and make sure we were enjoying our food. We loved the meal and would eat there again!
The next morning we decided to grab coffee and breakfast at the Community Bakery and then go to hike up Pinnacle Mountain at Pinnacle Mountain State Park.
We had a little trouble finding the right parking lot at first due to Google not being as helpful as we needed, but we eventually found the West Summit Trail Trailhead with plenty of time to beat the crowds.
It was a lovely trail, for awhile, until it just turned into some rock scrambling!
The rock scrambling part (unpictured) was terrifying to a point, and I had to sit down for awhile. I didn’t think I could finish and Louie went ahead without me, but after collecting myself and resting I decided to forge ahead and made it to the top!
After hiking, we went back to the SOMA area for lunch and went to a wonderful place called the Root Cafe. We just beat a large crowd, but were told it would be 40 to 50 minutes on our food anyway! This ended up being wrong, and we were eating within 20 minutes. I had a delicious banh mi tofu sandwich and Louie had a mushroom burger.
After lunch we decided to visit the Historic Arkansas Museum (called the HAM). It was okay, and sort of interesting, with old houses outside and some indoor displays, but I was hoping for a bit more on the actual history of Arkansas for general knowledge about the state and the area, and it was piecemeal. It was partly our fault for not doing the call in cell phone tour, but I’m not that interested in going to a museum and using my cell phone… I want to be in the moment at the museum, experiencing and reading stuff, and honestly, I use my phone for taking pictures and it can be tricky going back and forth. In any case, one of the more interesting things to me was that the old houses were actually there from the start of the museum in the 1930’s and the museum itself kept them from being torn down!
We walked over the Bill Clinton Presidential Library after that. We knew it was closed due to COVID but wanted to see the grounds and the building anyway, and there was plenty to do outside, some gardens, wetlands(so many turtles!!), and artwork area. It was a really cool building and I’m sorry we didn’t get to see inside!
The Heifer International Headquarters are there too, but there didn’t seem to be anything we could do there at this time either.
We walked across that bridge and considered looking at the other side as the map indicated a trail, but it didn’t look very welcoming so we turned back.
Our next stop was a brewery near our airbnb called Stone’s Throw Brewery. We got a nice sampler and sat outside enjoying the gorgeous weather: it was in the 70s!
We went back to the SOMA area for dinner to Mockingbird Bar and Tacos. It was tasty and we enjoyed sitting outside relaxing.
The Visitor’s Center was only allowing a certain number of people in at once, so we got a time to come back, and went to see the outside stuff first. There’s the high school where the Little Rock 9 attended school and some other places around, a gas station where the media used the payphone (it’s so funny to remember that we didn’t all used to have phones all the time!) and a bench where one of the 9 sat waiting for everybody and some other stuff. It’s a very moving and emotional place to visit, and it really makes you think about Civil Rights, how much things have changed yet how much things stay the same.
The museum was great (though the COVID protocols of limited people and giving times to come back meant that we were all clumped together going one way in the museum, when otherwise we might have naturally spread out more to avoid being clumped together!) and definitely worth a visit.
After the NPS site we got lunch at Three Fold Noodles and Dumpling. Louie wanted to stop by the Clinton Library again to look at a little island we had skipped the day before, but I didn’t want to walk in the sand so we split up.
The grounds were beautiful and there was a display of various globes which seemed to have something to do with Charlotte, NC initially rather than Little Rock so I assume it was a visiting exhibit in some way.
Anyway, Louie said the island was pretty much flooded out (I think from two years ago, likely?) and so then we hit the road for Hot Springs! If you have Little Rock questions, be sure to let me know!
