Nicking Arkansas [240411-13]

In making our way from Oklahoma to Missouri, our route passed through the very north-west corner of Arkansas.  We took the opportunity to stay a day and see some of the sights in the Bentonville area.

[Editor's Note - Have you been wondering how you can view higher resolution versions of the photos in this blog?  The answer to this (i.e.: https://tncsadventuresinthet42.blogspot.com/p/viewing-photos-at-high-resolution.html) and other questions can be found in the left hand sidebar.]

For the two nights that we in the area, we stayed at Praire Creek Campground - a COE (a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) campground on Beaver Lake, in nearby Rogers.

We had two museum trips planned for the day, originally.  The first was to the Walmart Museum.

The museum is normally located on one edge of the Bentonville City Square, but the building is currently undergoing renovations so a smaller version of the museum has been relocated a few blocks away in their Heritage Lab.  They have a Lego version of what the museum on the Square would look like, though.

There was this very enticing "spot" on the floor...

...so of course we had to oblige (with a rare hand-held selfie).

The "crown jewel" of the museum is usually the interactive holographic Sam Walton, who sort of is able to "have a conversation and answer questions".  We think he's supposed to be something like Turtle Talk With Crush (hopefully you've been to a Disney theme park recently, and understand the reference 😉) only with some sort of AI driven pre-recorded responses.

Unfortunately, holo-Sam wasn't quite feeling himself the day we visited.

We liked this particular exhibit, which showed the growth of Walmart locations through the years.

Uniforms through the years.

A view of most of the one-room museum.  We spent most of our two hours there on the kiosks on the left-hand wall.  Each covers a time period of Sam Walton's life, presenting a series of high level summary pages from which you can drill down and view additional photos or watch archival videos, employee interviews, etc. if you wanted to dive deeper into topic.  He was a very interesting man, with a very set business ethic and clear goals of what he wanted to accomplish and how to do it (which included visiting his stores, and listening to the opinions of his rank-and-file employees).  He was also "intensely frugal" - in both his business and personal lives; a philosophy we can relate to. 😉

Afterwards, we decided to walk the few blocks to the City Square to see the site where the Museum normally resides.  Even though the building is currently gutted, they were kind enough to print the netting on the outside of the scaffolding so that you can see what the Walmart Museum Building (and the original Walton's Five and Dime store next door) would normally look like.

Across the street, we walked by this ice cream truck.  Waffle cones for $1.59?  How could we NOT buy one? 😛

Just for laughs, we walked by another food truck on the way back to the car - to see if these sort of low prices were "an Arkansas thing" or specific to that one ice cream truck.  It appeared to be the latter.

The other museum on our original itinerary was the Museum of Native American History.

The first thing you see (and hear - hence the warning sign outside the front door seen above) as you enter the door is "Tusker", and authentic wooly mammoth from Siberia.  The docent told us that Tusker is actually assembled from the bones of four different mammoths, but the bones are all genuine with the exception of one in one foot, although she couldn't tell us exactly which one if she wanted to. 

The museum provided us with the audio wands that you see Christine listening to here.  Looking vaguely like a old-style cellphone, you punched in the number on the display to here an extended audio description of the artifact shown.  It was much nicer than having to read to ton of placards.

The museum wasn't quite what we were expecting.  We were thinking that there'd be some sort of narrative of the history of the Native American people through time, but instead everything was artifact-centric.  A full quarter of the museum was dedicated to displays like this one, showing arrowheads/knives/etc found with the audio describing where it was found, and the significance of the material and particular shape.

This was kind of interesting, though.  Most of the time, we usually think that the projectile weapon most commonly used by the Native American people was the bow and arrow.  But the atlatl was repeatedly referred to throughout the displays - and it was a weapon we had never heard of before.  It was basically a weighted spear throwing weapon, that provided greater distance and accuracy than hand-throwing would; the spear itself was two-piece, with a reusable shaft and detachable tip.

The blue zoetrope in the display above showed an animation of what the atlatl looked like in use.

"Pre-Columbian Hallmark Starship Ornament Display Stand" 😜 (That will make no sense to anyone who has never seen our Christmas tree before.)

Another section of the museum had a large collection of pottery, including normal pots and bowls and effigy type potter like the ones seen here.

We found this - "Lone Dog's Winter Count" particularly interesting.  The Dakota people count their years by winters, and every winter they added an image to this "calendar" that was the symbol of a significant and/or representative even for that year.  It starts at 1800 in the center and spirals outward to 1871 on the outside. 

The very nice docent that greeted us at the Walmart Museum recommended the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art as a "must see" if we had time, so it became our unscheduled third museum of the day.  The museum is undergoing a massive expansion at the moment, and finding it was a bit of an adventure.  Google Maps routed us to what apparently is their "new" parking structure - which has an 8.5' height limit (the T42 requires 10' at moment) declared at the entrance, but the side driveway you'd normally take at that time to not enter the garage at that point was blocked by construction equipment.  So we had to back ourselves out of the curved driveway (thankful that there was no one behind us) and park at the museum next door.  We should've taken the shuttle from the parking garage to the museum, but instead we decided to try walking it and started on a poorly marked forested path up the hill.  But thanks to directions from some helpful folks along the way, we finally found the museum.

The view of the museum's "sustainable roofs".

The museum contained an eclectic mix of art forms.  Mixed in with portraits in this gallery was the monitor on the left where the artist had filmed a man sitting for a half hour.  If you're patient, you can stand there and watch the 30 minute loop of the man shifting, fidgeting, etc.  We . . . were not that patient. 

Infinity Mirrored Room was one of our favorite pieces - largely because it reminded us of the Team Labs experience in Japan (Tom called it "Team Labs Lite").  The musical audio that you hear in the video is actually coming from the exhibit next door, but we thought that it enhances this one as well.

This activity was fun and interesting as well:

The museum restaurant...

...provided the opportunity for a different type of selfie.

On our way out of Arkansas the next morning, we stopped at the Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs.

Its an absolutely gorgeous chapel on a wooded hillside with towering glass walls - and an odd rule about having to be seated when taking photos, which is the reason for the somewhat dubious camera angles below.

Next up:  on to Missouri!