May 19

We didn’t have time yesterday to see the Sam Walton Museum so we went back to Bentonville today. The museum pays tribute to Sam Walton, businessman and entrepreneur, who founded Walmart in 1962 followed by Sam’s Club. For a time in the 1980’s, he was the richest man in the US. He began with a Ben Franklin store and then a local 5 and dime right here in Bentonville. A woman who has been working for Walmart for 17 years struck up a conversation with me. Her eyes lit up when she was talking about her early days with Walmart. All the things the museum displays were emphasizing seemed to be true. He was a hands on businessman and really cared about his “team” trying to make their lives better while offering “more for less” for the shopper. His thought was, if you can offer essentials for less money, families will have more to spend on other things. She thought it was a very positive work environment. In the years since he died, that has changed and she is very disheartened with her job. Instead of positive reinforcement it seems to be negative with a demerit system. In years past the managers would be out and about and know the “team” but now they sit in their offices. This was her take and follows with what I hear and read. I know the foundations associated with Walmart continue to make wonderful donations by the millions but the business seems to have a different slant today than it did when Sam was around. We walked around the great looking farmer’s market across the street at the town square and had lunch at a local café.

Sam Walton's 5-10
Now this houses the Sam Walton Museum.

Sam's Office
He would rather be out in the field than in his office.

Before going home we went to Blue Spring Heritage Center and took the loop walk down to the spring and through the lush woodlands and gardens. The spring pours 38 million gallons of cold water every 24 hours into the White River! One of the routes of the Trail of Tears came by the spring in 1838. A mill site goes back to 1840, and the bluff shelter is on the National Register of Historic Places. Ancient people used the bluff shelter back to 8,000 years BC. It has been a tourist attraction since 1948, and then in 1993, it opened with a nice path/boardwalk and gardens.

Blue Spring Heritage Center

Quigley’s Castle just south of Eureka Springs was our last stop for the day. I would agree that it is the Ozark’s strangest dwelling. Elsie Quigley’s grand daughter gave us an introduction and then we were able to wander through the house and yard. Elsie married Albert in the 1920’s leaving her sizable rock collection behind. They moved into his cabin and were soon raising a family of five kids. He promised to build her the house of her dreams but it kept getting put off with the depression and WWII. WWII brought with it a shortage of glass which was a big part of her future home. Finally in 1943, her patience had run out and she organized the kids into a work party. By the end of the day the cabin was torn down. I can only imagine the look on Albert’s face when he got home from work. His house was gone and live wires were everywhere. They moved into an old chicken house and began building the home she had planned. She didn’t know how to draw up plans but she had made a model. Since they couldn’t get glass, they sewed seven layers of flour sacks together to cover the 28 large windows in the winter. They remained that way for three years. She wanted to bring nature indoors. She accomplished that by having 28 huge windows and four feet of earth between the inside walls and the flooring. The plants she planted 68 years ago are still flowering and growing to the ceiling of this two story home. One of the bedrooms has a butterfly wall made of panels of butterflies covered in glass. Her fascination with rocks continued all through her life. After they were married, Albert had brought her childhood rock collection over to their cabin by the cart loads. She covered the entire house with rocks she carefully selected and then continued to make garden pieces out of rocks all her life! She certainly carried out her dream, a little strange but she was happy.

Quigley's Castle

Four feet of dirt line the inside walls so Elsie could plant and inside garden.

The plants grow clear to the ceiling of the second story bedrooms.
Look for the butterfly wall.

The garden has many, many rock features!

May 18 - Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

May 18

We spent the day in Bentonville visiting the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Norm had been introduced to it on the Sunday Morning Show. It opened last November and has had rave reviews instantly becoming a lasting monument to Alice Walton, daughter of Sam Walton (Walmart). “The mission of Crystal Bridges is to celebrate the American spirit in a setting that unites the power of art with the beauty of nature.” Dramatic glass and copper “bridges” form a series of pavilions surrounding spring-fed ponds that house galleries, a restaurant, meeting rooms, classrooms and a hall for special events. Moshe Safdie designed a beautiful building in a park like setting with gardens and paved trails.

The museum was founded in 2005 by Alice Walton, who chairs the board of directors, with $1.2 billion given by the Walton Family Foundation. Alice Walton began collecting art for the museum in 2004 and hasn’t stopped. I don’t think there is anything like it covering art from the Colonial period to the present. We visited the traveling exhibit first; The Hudson River School: Nature and the American Vision. This period of American art is a favorite of mine and the exhibit was the largest collection I have seen in one place! We had lunch before going into the main exhibit galleries with our IPOD audio guides. They were so easy to use and had multiple choices of passages to listen to on each painting they chose to present. Some were conversations with Alice Walton and museum curators. We didn’t surface again until 5:00 after walking through a couple hundred years of American art. Many names I knew and many were new to me. It was really quite amazing. Walmart Stores Inc. Foundation gave $10 million to cover the cost of free admission for the public for five years. They have encouraged school groups to visit paying all the expenses of the field trip down to the salary of a substitute teacher to stay behind with any students not able to come. They had a couple of places with sofas, comfy chairs and art books where you can flip through and rest your weary legs. They didn’t place the gift shop as a must see in order to exit the museum. They had beautiful and interesting things to purchase but you only entered if you were interested. So many nice features!

Some of my favorites:

　

May16 - Clinton Presidential Center and Park

May16
We have been looking forward to visiting the Clinton Presidential Center and Park in Little Rock. We walked in right as they we starting a docent led tour. She led us through the museum and gave us an excellent overview of what we could explore further on our own. We followed the tour with a film on Clinton, of course excellent, and then an audio guide took us back to see the displays on our own. They have reconstructed the White House Cabinet Room and also the Oval Office. These rooms are exactly like the “real thing.” The cabinet table was made by the same company that made the original. Our docent told us that Clinton will still come down from his pent house apartment to the Oval Office to sit and read after hours. If he notices that something is not in quite the right place, he will set things straight. He was very “hands on” in the building of the museum and felt something wasn’t quite right in the Oval Office. He realized it was that the ceiling was too low by a couple of inches. Sure enough, he was right and it was remedied. The second floor has the theater, Oval Office and displays on his presidency. Fourteen alcoves line the sides of the room with each multimedia exhibit focusing on a significant policy area during his eight years in office with titles such as “Putting People First.” Down the middle is a timeline for each year that has a display with key events and highlights. Under the displays are notebooks holding his schedule for each and every day of that year. I found the schedule for May 16, 2000, and it was a bit mind boggling. It was hard for me to imagine having to focus on so many different things in one day and continually be at the top of your game. Archival boxes holding non critical papers are at the ends of each alcove. It was a very moving experience for us. Any democrat would love it! The audio tour was all told by Clinton. He shared his thoughts with us on what was important to him, what he accomplished, what he didn’t, and what his hopes are for us nationally as well as globally. The third floor has the Oval Office, displays on his growing up years and life in the White House. There is also a display with some of the gifts he and Hillary received. We certainly could have spent more time here but we wanted to see Little Rock Central High School and the Visitor Center before it closed. Luckily they had a restaurant downstairs at the Clinton Museum so we didn’t starve.

White House Cabinet Room

Oval Office

Timeline Displays for Each Year in Office

The museum itself is a sleek modern design with a penthouse on the roof. All Presidential Libraries are built and maintained without government funds. The land the library was built on was a wasteland and a dangerous place to be at night. It has brought about a renewal in the surrounding area. A park surrounds the building and a 15 mile loop trail begins at the bridge that crosses the Arkansas River. It is a “green” building and won the platinum rating. We were impressed all the way around.

Clinton Presidential Center and Park

At the end of the day we only had 30 minutes in the Visitor Center at Little Rock Central High School. Students were still on the street after school and it struck me as pretty amazing to be standing here seeing black and white students enjoying each others company. In 1957, this very street was the scene of such powerful hatred, horrendous mobs hurling objects and spitting in the faces of black people and reporters. Governor Faubus ordered the National Guard to stop the nine black students from entering the building. Finally soldiers ordered by President Eisenhower escorted the nine students into the building. Day after day each of the “The Little Rock Nine” had to find their own way to keep going in the face of unrelenting verbal and physical harassment by some of their white classmates. At the end of the year, these courageous students looking for a decent education brought us closer to providing equal rights to all. We were able to listen to a couple of the student’s recorded comments in the museum. It’s amazing that they survived their high school experience, went onto college and had fulfilling careers. They have stayed in contact with each other and remained very close. I could go on and on with things I have learned.

Little Rock Central High School

Norm and Wes had been on the phone trying to figure out how to get together. Wes was in Little Rock spending time visiting a close friend in the hospital and didn’t know if he would be able to meet up with us. What a great surprise when he was at the end of the second floor at the Clinton museum waving his hand to get Norm’s attention! Norm and Christy had a chance to catch up with him and found out that he and his wife are hoping to move out to the northwest They love the rain! He is quite a guy. I think he probably has a good story on just about any topic. I’m pretty sure we will see them in Washington. What a nice reunion even if it was standing in an alcove at the Clinton Museum.

May 17
We had a beautiful drive north on the scenic Hwy 7 to Eureka Springs near the Missouri border. The drive took us through the Ozark National Forest with trees for miles and miles in every direction. We stopped for lunch at a local café on the square in the town of Harrison. We are staying at a KOA west of town with a pool. With the temperature at 87 degrees we actually put on our suits and had a swim! We enjoyed sitting by the pool staying nice and cool reading. The downside was that I ended up being a snack for a tick. It must have been on the chaise lounge and crawled onto my leg. YIKES! Norm checked on the computer as to how to get it OFF my leg. The prescribed method is to crab it with tweezers and gently pull. It worked! All in all, I still enjoyed the pool.

May 15 - Petit Jean State Park

May 15
We did a little sightseeing right here at Petit Jean State Park. We drove up to the lookout points on the “mountain” 800 feet above the valley floor with a fabulous view of the Arkansas River and sspawling farmland surrounded by tree covered rolling hills. Petit Jean’s grave site is here on the mountain top. The legend made for good reading. She fell in love with a young French explorer. When he was ordered to explore the Louisiana Territory, he thought it was too dangerous for her to come along. She couldn’t bare living without him and got hired on as a crew member as a young man. With her hair pulled back and her cap and sailor clothes on even the love of her life didn’t recognize her. They worked their way up the river and camped out here on this mountain. She became ill the day they were to head home. They put off their sailing thinking she might cause others to become ill and that she would recover but she died within three days. Her identity wasn’t know until she was examined by the doctor. What a surprise and how tragic. She should have stayed home!

View of the Arkansa River at Petit Jean State Park

Petit Jean's Grave

Stout “Mansion” is only a rock ruin today but it was a hotel and later a YMCA camp building years ago. We took a short walk to Rock House Cave. It really isn’t a cave but an excellent shelter that was used by Native Americans and frontiersmen. We passed some really unusual rock formations called "turtle rocks" that looked like a turtle shell.

Stout "Mansion"

Rock Horse Cave

The group of CCC workers that did the early construction in the park was a group of veterans. The camp was designated a V-CCC camp. They were older men that the average CCC worker and generally had more skills. It was a large camp and of course they got clothing, room and board, free medical, and education. Of their $30.00 a month pay, they kept $5.00 and $25.00 was sent home to their families. Some of the buildings that are still standing are the Visitor Center, the lodge and a the picturesque Cedar Creek Bridge.

We took the country roads into Conway and Mayflower but there was not much to see. Norm has a good friend through work, Wes, that lives on Lake Conway and we are hoping to meet up with him while we are in the area. The one interesting thing we saw was Toad Suck Dam and Locks on the Arkansas River. The term “toad suck” came from the days of the river boats that would come in here and have to wait for the river water to rise so they could continue down the river. They would go into the taverns near by and suck down so much beer that their faces swelled up like a toad.

Toad Suck Dam and Locks
We have never seen a dam like one.
There wasn't any information on it. I'll have to check out the internet.

May 14

We took a two hour scenic drive down to Hot Springs. A friend of ours, Debbie, grew up in Georgia and spent time in the summers with cousins just a few miles from Petit Jean. We took a little side trip to get some photos for her. The little town has many of the buildings that would have been there back then. It is still a small town. Fun to picture her running across the fields with her cousins.

Hot Springs was quite a place in its day but during the 1950’s changes in medicine led to a rapid decline in the use of water therapies. People began taking driving vacations rather than going to a single destination and business declined. When Chris and Norm came through here in the early 90’s it was looking a pretty bedraggled. The town seems to be on the up swing with two of the bath houses open and many of the stores fronts across the street have been restored and are full of merchandise. Hot Springs and Central Ave have quite a history.

Bathhouse Row on the Magnolia Lined Street

Of course the hot springs were used by the local Indians for hundreds of years before frontiersmen came in and began putting up wooden buildings, even tents, to offer hot baths in the early 1800’s. It began catching on. The train line came through town and people were flocking here to soak in the waters. The federal government actually set aside land here in 1832 as the first US reservation. Bathhouse Row was on its way. The row of bathhouses we see today are turn of the century. Magnolias were planted all along the street and are just ending there blooming season. Across the street from the bathhouses are stores, restaurants and hotels just as it was a hundred years ago. Some of the big hotels are pretty much in ruin up the street. Today there is a gambling museum and a gangster museum there also! I guess gambling was big and gangsters were here to get their soaks too. The National Park headquarters is in the beautiful Fordyce Bathhouse.

Fordyce Bathhouse

Twenty-seven rooms were restored in the 80’s and today they offer a tour so we can see what it must have been like to come for water treatments 100 years ago. Besides the bath facilities, there are various beautiful salons, a rooftop garden, beauty shop, and a gym that had the latest in workout machines that used resistance way back then. Of course the men were on one side and the women on the other. They were trying all kinds of treatments from soaks to messages, steam treatments, and hot packs. The water was held at 140 degrees. And they were put in vapor cabinet, like a sauna, for 30 minutes. Now the time limit is two minutes!

I'm ready for a soak - I wish!

The Vapor Cabinet is in the rear on the left.
Your head sticks out the hole.

One of the Many Beautiful Salons

In the basement we saw the water coming to the surface at 143 degrees. I takes about 4,000 years for this water to filter down 8,000 feet and then come to the surface. Buckstaff bathhouse is the only bathhouse that has been continually open through the years. They still offer the traditional treatments. For only $30.00 you can get a tub bath, hot packs, sitz bath, vapor cabinet, needle shower and whirlpool! Not bad. You can add in a massage for another $35.00.

Buckstaff Bathhouse where you can still get the traditional treatments.

Quapaw Baths and Spa is more the modern spa. I would have loved taking in a little of the pampering! I think Buckstaff would have been my choice.

We are enjoying a "moonshone margarita."  

May 12

We had a more somber afternoon with our visit to the National Civil Rights Museum in downtown Memphis. The museum has incorporated the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King was assassinated along with the rooming house across the street where the alleged shot was fired. A wreath hangs on the balcony where he was standing and the motel room is as it was on that fateful day. The mission of the museum is to “chronicle key episodes of the American civil rights movement and the legacy of this movement to inspire participation in civil and human rights efforts globally, through our collections, exhibitions and educational programs.” Our audio guides led us through the key events in the civil rights movement from the early days of slavery to the present. There was a section on the evidence and investigations of the killing. The last displays were on the human right issues globally. It was so well done and a very emotional experience. Everyone in my generation remembers the TV news programs with the news relating stories on the attempts lead peaceful marches and to desegregate the south from the water fountains to the schools. Horrendous things happened to so many people trying to bring about change. TV really brought it home to all of us. Living in the suburbs in southern California and going to a pretty much a lily white high school and college surely didn’t expose me directly to what was going on in other parts of our country. They also zeroed in on the hate felt towards the African Americans when marches were held in cities in the north like Detroit. Of course the work and influence of Martin Luther King Jr. was highlighted but they also included all the other groups and individuals like the Black Panthers and Malcolm X that were involved in the movement. Such strides have been made with integration but there is still so much that needs to happen for people that have been beaten down in our own country let alone globally. It has been interesting to visit the National Park in Atlanta where King was born and eventually buried, then see the new Martin Luther King Jr. monument and finally this museum today where he was shot. We are going to see the high school in Little Rock where black students made their first attempts to integrate the city school system. My awareness has certainly been heightened. Discrimination is happening right at home at Olympia High School with horrible bullying from a group of white boys towards anyone that is of a different color! The kids being bullied feel too threatened to do anything about it. My hair dresser’s partner’s grandson is one of the victims. What a sad state!

The Lorraine Motel is incorporated in the National Civil Rights Museum
Above the car is the wreath on the balcony where Martin Luther king Jr. was shot.

King Motel Room

Exhibit on the History of the KKK

Part of the Exhibit on the Sit-in in the Cafe

Exhibit on Rosa Parks

On a lighter note, before going over to the museum we had lunch at Arcade Restaurant right down the street from the Loraine Motel and museum. It is a diner that has been owned and operated by a Greek family since 1919. It has always been open 24 hours a day and has seen many famous people walk through its doors. I wonder if Martin Luther King Jr. ate here. Elvis and many other names we know enjoyed meals here. They have been featured in so many magazines and on the Travel Channel. We were just looking for a place to eat before going to the museum and hit on a great one!

May 13

Mother’s Day - The best part of the day was talking to our Moms and Chris and I getting phone calls from our kids. Thank you guys for calling. I love the modern world with our cell phones. We drove past Little Rock going a little north to Petit Jean State Park. So much of our travel has found us staying in RV Resorts and KOA campgrounds because we have been visiting cities. It has been great to be close to all we have wanted to see but we are loving being in this beautiful and quiet state park. They call this area the mountains but we would call it rolling hills. The hills are covered with gorgeous deciduous trees with a few pines here and there. Rivers and lakes are all over the map. The lodge here was built in the 30’s by the CCC. They closed it down two years ago and did a big remodel job on it. This weekend was the grand opening. The dining room is lovely with a gorgeous view. We decided to get on the two hour wait list and check out a couple of places in the park in the mean time. When our table came up we had a lovely window seat with plenty of time to enjoy the view as the kitchen was having a hard time keeping up with the orders. We weren’t in a hurry and thoroughly enjoyed our meals when they finally arrived. The crew will all be a little weary after today!

May 11 - Music in Memphis

May 11
We explored a little bit of the music world today with a factory tour of the Gibson Guitar factory and then a tour of Sun Studios after lunch at the Blue Plate Café. The Gibson factory in Memphis is one of three. We saw how sixty-five employees are responsible for turning out 45 perfect guitars daily. Our guide explained the whole process as we watched the employees in action. If at any time the guitar is deemed not perfect, it goes to the scrap pile. There are no seconds at Gibson’s. Luckily only 4% end up getting cut up as scrap lumber. It is very labor intensive. Some is done by computer but most is done by hand. The guitars we saw being made go for $2,000 to $5,000.

Gibson Guitar Factory

We had a music loven’ enthusiastic guide at Sun Studios, the birth place of rock’n’roll! A young guy named Sam Phillips started out recoding anything and everything someone wanted recorded with portable equipment in 1950 right here in Memphis. His dream was to have a recording studio and record the music he loved, the blues, that he was hearing on Beale Street. He opened Sun Studios right here in this building and did just that for four years. Nashville was playing Country on the radio on WSM while Memphis was playing the “Blues” on WDIA. For the first time a huge white audience was listening to the Blues; a big part of the audience being teenagers. In 1954, Elvis walked into the studio to see if he could record a song for his mother. He talked Marion, the front lady of the studio, into letting him record a song for $4.00. She asked him who he sounded like and he replied, “I don’t sound like nobody.” Marion liked it and passed it on but Sam wasn’t impressed.

Marion, first to recognize Elvis' talent.

Elvis kept coming back and charming Marion for a year before Marion finally talked Sam into listening to him again. Sam set him up with two musicians for a recoding session. He still couldn’t see what Marion saw in this nervous skinny country kid. He sent Elvis out to take a break. When he came back in he started kidding around with the musicians. He was dancing all around and singing in a soft relaxed voice when Sam came out. “Start Over!,” Sam yelled and the recording began with Elvis singing “That’s All Right” like no Blues song Sam had ever heard. “It had all the power and honesty of the Blues mixed with the wildness and exuberance of an all night party.” Sam marked the floor with three X’s to show where the two musicians plus Elvis were standing. Sam sent it over to the DJ at WDIA. He played it and it immediately got raves. One day he played it 14 times in a row! Rock N Roll was born! The rest is history. Sam signed Elvis to a 3 year contract but ended up releasing him to RCA and Elvis began recording in Studio B in Nashville after 18 months so Elvis could get nationwide promotion. Sam ended up recoding Johnny Cash, Sam Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and many others. One of the stories I loved was these three recoding when Elvis stopped by to chat. The four of them ended up in a jam session. Sam recoded it but it couldn’t be released since Elvis was with RCA. After Elvis’ death it was released and now there is a musical called the “Million Dollar Quartet.” It has been playing in Chicago for years. We would love to get tickets to see it when we are there in June!

Picture of the "Million Dollar Quartet"

Sam in his recording studio.

Sam eventually moved the studio. This very studio is now open again looking exactly as it was left. It is an icon and recording artists are still coming here today to pay homage and record here. Ringo called it Ground Zero. Bob Dylan came through the door, kissed the X on the floor that marks the place Elvis first stood when he recorded and walked out. Anyone can rent the studio for $150 an hour and record their music. They also have a karaoke recoding price of $30.00! The three X’s are still on the floor along with the mike that Elvis and all those to follow in those early years used. We got to stand on the X and hold the microphone! Between the Grand Ole Opry, Studio B, Graceland, and Sun Studios we have really had a fabulous “music tour.”

Here I am holding the very mike that Elvis, Johnny Cash and
Jerry Lee Luis held! See the X on the floor marking where Elvis stood!

Rock N Roll is Born!