Aloha all,
most state slogans are a little weird. Missouri is known as “The Show Me State”, even though nobody seem to be able to “show me” where that name really comes from. And Arkansas is “The Natural State”, as if all the other states were artificial. But we saw several shows in Missouri and after driving through the beautiful nature of Arkansas, even that name kind of makes sense. I’d still rather call Arkansas “The Penultimate State”. Arkansas was the 49th state Sandra and I have visited. So we still can’t tell you which one is our favorite, since we have not seen them all yet. I am leaning towards Hawaii. But I will withhold my judgment until we have seen them all. Maybe Oklahoma will surprise us, but we will probably not get there on this trip.
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| Joy enjoys the fall colors ion Missouri |
The very first morning after returning from our European side trip, we went to the Ulysses Grant National Historical Site just outside of St. Louis, Missouri. We always enjoy historical presidential sites. We learnt about President Grant in the visitor center, on the tour of his house and during a long chat with the park ranger. But my favorite part at the site was totally unrelated to Grant: They had a show by an actress impersonating Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. Surprisingly the show was at 10 o’clock in the morning, with no apparent connection to President Grant and the show was free of charge. Got to love the Show Me State!
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| Mary Shelley One Woman Show |
Continuing with the tradition of visiting homes of authors I have never read, we went to the home of Laura Ingalls Wilder. She wrote the “Little House” book series. Sandra had at least seen the “Little House on the Prairie” TV show, I knew nothing about it except that so many people love her stories. We got to tour the simple, but charming house where she started writing the books and also the much more modern ‘Rock House’ on the same property that her daughter had built for her and her husband. Apparently they moved in for several years because they did not want to appear ungrateful, but eventually they moved back into their original home, because it was home.
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| Laura Ingalls Wilder's little house in Mansfield, Missouri |
Now I know a little more about the Little House stories. The more I tried to find out what the stories are about, the more surprised I got how popular they are. It seems to be a rural version of Seinfeld: “A show about nothing”. Tell me if I am missing something, but it seems to be about normal life on the prairie just like Seinfeld is about normal life in the city. Seinfeld can be very entertaining without really being about anything, so maybe I should read the Little Prairie books, too. I’ll do that right after I finish my first full book by Mark Twain.
Our last stop in Missouri was Branson. We had heard a lot about it, but honestly we did not really know what to expect. It reminded us a lot of Las Vegas, just without the gambling and without the adult entertainment. Also with a much prettier setting: The Ozark Mountains are a lot more scenic and a lot more colorful this time of the year than the Nevada desert. Most of the shows and attractions of Branson seem pretty tacky, so even during our short stay, we fled a couple of times to just walk through the woods around Branson.
We did visit one of the tourist attractions: The Titanic Museum, which was surprisingly informative. For example: Did you know that passengers from 40 countries were on the Titanic, but athletes from only 28 countries competed at the Olympics the same year? Interesting also how little the White Star Line felt responsible for the accident. The museum had a letter displayed that was sent to a widow, requesting her to pay a hefty fee if she wanted the remains of her husband shipped to her. I was also surprised to learn that you had a better chance of survival as a woman in 3rd class than as a man in 1st class. The museum was very engaging, highlighting many aspects and personal stories. They also had some hands-on exhibits or maybe I should say “hands-in” exhibits: Reading that the water was 28 degrees F (minus 2 degrees Celsius) is one thing. Actually sticking your hand in water this cold is something different. I was determined to leave my hand in there long enough to convince myself that I would have survived until I made it onto a life raft. But after only 20 seconds, my hand pulled out without even consulting me.
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| Titanic Museum in Branson, MO |
We also picked one of the 42 million shows offered in Branson. They all seem to involve country music, but the Dolly Parton Stampede also includes horses and a dinner, so it was a pretty easy decision.
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| Dolly Parton's Stampede Dinner Show |
The show was fun, but I was even more impressed how they serve a sit down dinner to over 1,000 people in a matter of minutes. Surprisingly, it was all hot and actually pretty delicious for such a mass feeding. However, it paled in comparison to our last culinary experience in Branson: The Keeter Center at the College of the Ozarks campus gives students a chance to get job training and us one of our best lunches of the trip.
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| Welcome to "The Natural State" |
Arkansas impressed us from the very beginning. The welcome center was very welcoming and gave us all kinds of good suggestions. The hike in the Lost Valley at the Buffalo National River was amazing: The fall colors were gorgeous and the waterfalls were spectacular. Especially the one you had to go spelunking to get to. Eden Falls Cave is just scary enough to be an adventure, but safe enough to be fun. After ducking, squeezing and crawling for 10 minutes you come to this large cave with a 35ft waterfall coming out of the rock ceiling. I love things that feel like a real adventure, but are actually very safe.
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| Spelunking in the Lost Valley in Arkansas |
The next day we went to the first State Park of Arkansas. I can see why Petite Jean was the first area they wanted to protect: It’s beautiful! Maybe I’m forgetting something and Sandra might correct me when she proofreads this, but I’d say in the first two days in Arkansas we did our two prettiest hikes of the whole trip, with a nice lunch at a CCC lodge as an extra bonus.
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| Grotto at the Petite Jean State Park |
Little Rock offered everything we love about road trips and one thing that made us miss Maui. It has a presidential library, a state capitol, a National Park Service site, a history museum, a small local theater, a riverfront area and a very central and very affordable RV Park. Unfortunately, it also had ridiculous cold weather - so we won’t mind going back to our little tropical island without any state capitol or presidential library.
Of course we spent a full day at the Clinton Presidential Library, but I want to be honest: It’s not my favorite. The building is kind of cool, first because it has its own pedestrian bridge that basically connect it directly with our RV Park on the other side of the Arkansas river. Also, it looks more like a library than any of the other presidential libraries. But we did not find it to be as engaging as most of the other presidential libraries we have been to. This surprised me, since it is one of the most modern ones. We did enjoy the guided tour and I have to say, I also enjoyed every little clip of Clinton speaking. Love him or hate him, he sure is a great orator, not just in comparison to “You Know Who”.
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| Bridge from our campground to the Clinton Presidential Library |
The Arkansas State Capitol is much less ornate than others, but still very impressive. For now Iowa is still my favorite. The marble staircases, the hallways and the dome are more plain, with very little artwork.
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| Arkansas Capitol in Little Rock, plain, but impressive |
But they have portraits of former governors on the walls, of course including Bill Clinton. Elected when he was only 32 years old, he looks like a kid, but obviously the people of Arkansas saw the potential he had and elected the kid as their governor five times.
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| Billy The Kid |
The Old State Capitol is now a history museum. This is where I learnt that Arkansas actually voted to stay in the Union just a few weeks before joining the Confederacy. There was also an attempt to re-join the union before the end of the civil war. And they sent troops to both sides of the conflict! The more we learn, the more complicated it gets. It’ was so much easier when everybody south of the Mason-Dixon Line was bad and everybody north of it was good. It’s just not true.
The most interesting site to visit in Little Rock I thought was the National Historical Site at the Little Rock Central High School. This is where the de-segregation fight happened in 1957 when “The Little Rock Nine” students tried to attend the prestigious, formerly all white school after the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. The courts had evolved enough, but many white people had not. The mob of angry white people attacking the nine innocent, smart and extremely well behaved black students looks ridiculous from today’s perspective.
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| Integration is 'unchristian', 'illegal' and 'Communism' - sounds like a parody today |
But even this black against white story is not as black and white as it first appears:
Governor Faubus, who refused to accept the law and actually uses the national guard to keep the black students out of the school looks pretty bad, right?
President Eisenhower, who sends in the 101st Airborne Division to escort and protect the ‘Litte Rock Nine” looks pretty good, right?
Good and bad looked so easy to determine until we took a guided tour with a park ranger to the school (it’s still a regular public high school today) and I did a little more research: Turns out Governor Faubus was actually relatively progressive and more open to desegregation than others in the south at the time. It’s true that without Eisenhower sending federal troops there is no way the black kids could have gone to school that year. Ike could have take even more credit since he had nominated Chief Justice Warren, who swung the vote in Brown vs. Board in favor of desegregation. However, Eisenhower apparently was very sympathetic to white parents who did not want black students at their schools and he is quoted saying: “I made two mistakes. They both sit on the Supreme Court.” - it’s always more complicated than it sounds at first. But one thing is simple: The country is a better place thanks to the brave nine kids. They had to declare not to retaliate, no matter the verbal and physical abuse they were subjected to. One of them dared to call students “white trash” when they physically assaulted her. The white students were not punished, she got expelled.
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| Ranger tour at the Little Rock Central High School |
When we first arrived at Hot Springs National Park, it was cold, but still beautiful. We were thrilled to find out that the observation tower was just the right distance from the campground for a little afternoon hike. One of us was less thrilled that the hike got a little longer because the elevator was out of order, but the view from the top was well worth the extra climb.
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| View from the Observation tower to Hot Springs, AK |
When we were back in Joy, it started snowing and ironically, Hot Springs was the coldest night we ever had on a road trip. But with extra heaters, we managed to keep Joy’s pipes from freezing and she kept us nice and cozy.
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| Unusual November snow at the Bathhouse Row in Hot Springs |
The national park visitor center of Hot Springs is in the historic Fordyce Bathhouse. This 1915 bathhouse was the grandest of them all and also the first one to go out of business in 1962. We took a tour through the Fordyce Bathhouse which explained the history and the procedures in great detail. It all sounded like a weird mix of luxurious spa experience and medieval torture chamber. Electroshocking patients in bathtubs and injecting them with mercury was all part of the treatment plans back then.
On the other hand, the facilities were built lavishly and several of the treatments sounded very enjoyable. No wonder they attracted lots of rich men and even the baseball stars of the days, including Babe Ruth. The bathhouses make somewhat of a comeback, minus the electroshocks and the mercury injections. We opted for the Quapaw Bathhouse, because soaking in hot pools is about the best thing to do when it’s freezing and snowing outside.
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| Soaking at the Quapaw Bathhouse |
But enough with the laziness! After a day of soaking in Hot Springs, it was time to go back to history class. The Clinton Library had been a little light on his early years, so we filled in the gaps when we visited his home at his birthplace in Hope, AK. This is where William Blythe grew up. Yes, that was Bill Clinton’s name at birth. His dad passed before he was born and he later took on his stepfather’s name.
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| Private tour of Clintons Birthplace Home |
For the last two days we’ve been easing our way from Arkansas to Texas. Yesterday, we spent all day in the Historic Washington State Park. Washington was the last stop in Arkansas on the Southwest Trail. Many pioneers and settlers traveled a similar route we took from St. Louis to Texas, including Sam Houston, James Bowie and Davy Crockett. We have a lot to learn about this part of American history. I know nothing about these American heroes except that a city, a knife and a Disney movie are named after them, respectively.
The town of Washington used to be a pretty big deal. Not only was it the capital of the county, it was even the confederate state capital of Arkansas during the civil war. They were doing so well, that they actually voted not to have the railroad come to their town. They did not expect that this was the beginning of the end for Washington and the beginning of the new town of Hope. They probably also did not expect that the small town of Hope, which the railroad founded instead of stopping in Washington would go on to produce a governor and president (Clinton) and another governor and presidential candidate (Huckabee).
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| Historic Washington - Arkansas Sate Park |
The town of Washington went downhill so quickly, that most of the buildings were simply left empty until a group of local ladies lobbied for the preservation and restoration of this part of early Arkansas history. Today, the town is a small Williamsburg. We visited several historic homes, the local doctor, the courthouse, the print shop and the blacksmith and had lunch in the 1832 William Tavern.
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| One of the historic homes, left half remodeled, right half left as it was found |
They also have the state’s largest magnolia tree and a moon tree. In case you are as ignorant as we were until yesterday and don’t know what a moon tree is: The astronauts on Apollo 14 took 500 tree seeds with them around the moon in 1971. They wanted to see whether being in space would have any effect on the seeds. Apparently it did not. The seedlings did about the same as the earthbound control group. 47 years later, 80 of them still survive throughout the world and at least the moon tree we saw in Washington looked an awful lot like a regular pine tree.
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| Texarkana's post office sits half in Texas, half in Arkansas |
Today we visited Texarkana, which, as the name suggests, sits right on the state line between Arkansas and Texas. In fact, they have the only dual-state post office in the country, right in the middle on the state line, serving both towns: Texarkana, Texas and Texarkana, Arkansas. Combined they have a population of almost 70,000. It’s one of the weirdest towns we have been to and a little depressing:
- We have been to ghost towns that seemed more alive than downtown Texarkana
- There are many abandoned buildings, but no homeless and no shady characters, apparently even those have abandoned downtown
- Sadly, the building that seemed to be in the best shape was the Juvenile Correction Center
- The only place where we saw people playing was the prison courtyard, which is only a block from the historical center of town.
- There were only a handful of business open in downtown. Three of them are the historical places we visited and ironically, they tell the story of how grand Texarkana used to be.
- The Grim Hotel, which used to be the grandest hotel in town is totally abandoned and now truly a grim sight. The Super 8 and Motel 6 outside of town is doing fine.
- There is a sign at the former Grim Hotel, announcing ambitious plans to revitalize the building “coming soon”. After talking to a local, it sounds a lot like the “Jesus Coming Soon” sign on the church in Lahaina. I would not hold my breath for either one.
- Ironically, we had finally thought about looking for an RV friendly parking lot for Joy before heading downtown. At first we were happy that the large, central parking lot was basically empty and offered free, unlimited parking. But soon we noticed that we could have parked sideways in the middle of the main street and it would not have caused any issues whatsoever.
When I asked the young lady at the museum when the heydays of Texarkana had been, she did not really understand the question. She was born in the 80’s and apparently to her, this is what downtown Texarkana has always looked. I guess she never questioned why there were these grand, but abandoned buildings. She did not even know whether she was in Texas or Arkansas. Our tour guide at the other two sites was a British lady and relatively new to the town, but luckily a whole lot better informed. Especially the tour of the interestingly shaped “Ace of Clubs House” was a true highlight in this desolate place.
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| I don't even want to know how depressing downtown Texarkana must feel if the weather is not this beautiful... |
Overall, Texarkana was the kind of place I am glad we visited, but we are even gladder we don’t live there. Even the listing for a 4 bedroom renovated home right downtown with a wrap around porch for $79K did not tempt us.
Now we are in Texas. Their slogan is “Go Big or Go Home”. But you know what I think of slogans. We’ll just change that to “Go for a small tour and Go home”.
Aloha from the town of Lone Star in the Lone Star State,
Chris & Sandra
