I packed up after a week in Saint Louis and drove southwest through southern Missouri and into the topmost sliver of Arkansas. It’s easy to forget that this part of Missouri is the edge of the west until you’re hurtling through middle-america in a stupor of strange fascination. Moving towards the western united states the colours around start to turn orange and space lengthens. Driving across the country allows me to experience regional differences, moving through gradual changes in topography and geology, in perspective and lifestyle, as both the natural and cultural worlds shift around me. On this leg of my trip I diverged from my norm and only listened to music (I was particularly fond of the radio station 92.9 around Rolla, Missouri -easily my favourite station I have listened to so far). Just around nightfall I arrived in what is likely to be the most unusual stop of this trip: Bentonville, Arkansas.
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| Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art |
Bentonville is bizarre, almost more of an experiment than a place to live. The small town is located in the very northwest corner of the state and should be a prime example of a place no one would ever visit- a tiny town in the middle of nowhere with boring culinary options, bars that close by midnight, and no alcohol sales on Sunday. However, what puts Bentonville on the map is that it's home to the original Walmart. The Waltons throw money to the city in order to build state of the art attractions (aka the Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, which brings in people from outside the area). There is a weird sense of being in an artificially created tourism experiment located in a rural-turned-suburb town.
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| Michael Derian, the worst kid out there, but the reason for my Bentonville stop. |
Instead of
spending labour day weekend stuck in Bentonville, Derian and I explored the
more interesting surrounding areas. On Saturday we drove half an hour to
Fayetteville, the fairly typical college town where the University of Arkansas
is located, to watch the football game with a couple of fans. A nice thing
about Fayetteville is that it is a place where people might actually want to
live. After perusing an expansive used bookstore with a hilarious new age
section, we went to mellow mushroom to indulge in pizza and beer and figure out
our plans for the next day.
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| Oklahoma at it's most attractive angle... |
On sunday we set off to accomplish our big dreams; packed up backpacks, pillows, and beer, got gas and snacks, and made our way to Oklahoma. Natural Falls State Park doesn’t have much in the way of challenging hiking, but it does have a couple worthwhile views and some good spots for taking IPA breaks (which is essentially the basis of mine and Dorian's friendship). After hiking through the entirety of the park, we got in the car and drove to Fayetteville to go out for the night. Naturally we wanted to clean up before re-entering normal society so we snuck into a coed dorm behind a student, parted ways, found our respective showers, and got ready to go out in Fayetteville. (thank you gregson hall!)
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| give him a Bells Two-Hearted*, ask which Beatle is the best one, and you've got an instant friend. *Bells not pictured |
After a
satisfying meal, we slipped into a little bar where a band caught our eye (it’s
hard to resist stand-up bass and banjo). The band ended up being fairly
abysmal, but the bartender was great. We finished our beers and endured a
particularly unimpressive Tom Petty cover before making our way to the bar our
mellow mushroom waiter recommended to us. He’d told us it was a whiskey bar
with “young, bearded intellectuals” and given that Derian and I have been known
to engage in such pretentious activities as reading Kerouac, staying up late
discussing the best bands of all time, and spending 30 minutes choosing what
IPA we should try, it sounded like the place for us. We agreed that this bar
was indeed the place we’d want to frequent if we lived in Fayetteville, but we
ended up heading home a little after midnight due to exhaustion. This proved
clutch as our original plan was to crack the windows and sleep in the car until
morning and it ended up pouring down rain overnight.
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| Arkansas always looks best after a chocolate break. |
Labour day
started off damp but by the afternoon sunshine was in abundance. It took us at
least five hours of watching Daria before we managed to get out the door and
drive to Devil’s Den State Park. We spent the rest of the afternoon on a
wonderful hike full of chilly caverns and lovely views of Arkansas. There is a
spectacular and unexpected stacked rock expanse which only makes this state
park better.
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| Sea of Stacked Rocks: Devil's Den State Park, AR |
I left
Arkansas the next morning. It was cold and grey. I hope you never have to move
to the northeast of Arkansas, but if you do, good luck.
(from 6 September 2014)
