We did it! We made it to Arkansas and Hot Springs National Park. My eye is still healing, but we went anyhow.
We flew into Little Rock, Arkansas. It was not a full Southwest flight and we got to spread out over three seats and play cards (I won). Our first stop was the William J. Clinton Presidential Library. As they are talking about a possible Obama library in Chicago, it was nice to see what a more recent presidential library might look like.
We first had lunch at Forty Two in the lower level of the complex. It was a very nice setting with good food at a decent price; worth the stop. We then headed to the displays. The replica of the Oval Office was neat.
The building itself was beautiful - I much enjoyed walking around it. The displays they had were endless...you could have spent all day reading the material (we didn't as we had other stops to make).
We did enjoy the segments by year. Each segment had binders with individual day plans/schedules of the President.
The library was mostly about the positives of the presidency (as it should be). But of course, we had to look into the 1998 year when a certain blue dress became a hot topic. We did find this: "It was also a year when the President acknowledged making a serious mistake in his personal life...".
In looking into the schedule of a day dealing with Impeachment, it merely read 11:15 am - 6:30 pm - Downtime. In the end, the country did fairly well under his leadership and there were a lot of interesting facts throughout the center.
It was a nice day out so we walked over the pedestrian bridge - just a very nice architectural building.
We walked over to Heifer Village to walk through their visitor center - didn't spend a lot of time.
We then got in the car to drive to the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site.
It was a very nice stop, but much of the display was picking up phones and listening to audio...I wasn't going to do that in the middle of flu season! We did read and watch some video, and walked across the street to the high school entrance garden (it is still an active high school today).
Since it was so nice out, we went to Pinnacles State Park for a hike (my volunteer associate told me about the state park not to far from Little Rock). We easily found the West Summit Trailhead along with the rest of Arkansas...it was busy. I suppose that is what happen when there is a 65 degree day in January.
What would a vacation be without some risky rock climbing exposed hiking...it wasn't that bad. I didn't wear an eye patch though...just sun glasses. I needed two eyes to deal with the rock scrambling.
Some nice views as we got towards the top. Walked down with a local who told us more about the area - that was nice.
The drive to Hot Springs took us about an hour and we got there after dark. We knew we wanted to eat at Bill Clinton's favorite BBQ in Hot Springs (Bill Clinton grew up in Hot Springs). McClards was good; we both ate too much.
We had a basic hotel room in Hot Springs, and would get up the next day to visit our next national park...
