With both of us on opposite coasts, it was time to meet in the middle for this year’s trip.
Quinn and I flew to Little Rock AR, grabbed a rental car and headed to Magazine Mountain, the highest point in Arkansas at 2,753. After a quick assent, we drove to Bentonville AR, home of Walmart. We had a nice dinner in an unusually redecorated church, The Preacher’s Son. The next day we skipped the Walmart Museum and opted for the Crystal Bridges Museum instead. This is a spectacular museum of American art, built and maintained by the Walton Family Foundation and boasting over $488 million in assets https://crystalbridges.org/. There was a lot of very famous and beautiful art, but the exhibit arrangements and narratives were way too woke for me. The grounds have a classic Usonian Frank Lloyd Wright designed home which was built in 1956 in New Jersey but moved and restored here in 2013. There seemed to be an architectural theme to this trip and we stopped at the Bella Vista and Thorncrown Chapels on the way to Eureka Springs. The Thorncrown Chapel was designed by E. Fay Jones, a contemporary of F. L. Wright. It has 425 windows. https://thorncrown.com/
Eureka Springs was a sacred healing place to the local Osage Nation Indians. There are over 140 natural springs in the area and their waters are claimed to cure all sorts of ailments. Neither of us were sick so we didn’t drink the water. The beautiful little town is in a very narrow valley with houses built right into the limestone cliffs. We stayed at the historic Basin Springs Hotel. During the 2 day stay, we toured the Onyx Cave, visited the 65 foot Christ of the Ozarks statue, had a sunset cocktail at the haunted Crescent Hotel, did a nice 4-mile hike around Leatherwood Lake, and hiked up to Pivot Rock. On the drive back to Little Rock, the weather was beginning to get stormy, so our quick side trip to the Buffalo National River was curtailed a bit. We did get in a hike to an old 1930’s homestead that was occupied as late as 1962. Another fun and different father/daughter trip.
Eureka Springs is also known for paranormal activity, which we did not experience, though I had hoped Dad would get the haunted room, to tell me about it. 😉
Great trip, Dad!