Northwest Arkansas
November of 2021, we decided to take off on an adventure to Bentonville, Arkansas. We had taken the Fall to study Sam Walton's life and work, no matter how you feel about Walmart, Sam Walton accomplished a lot! Sam Walton's LEGACY lives on through his children, grandchildren, and through the many business associates from his early days of giving stock to his employees. Bentonville is a testament to this with its hundreds of miles of biking and hiking trails all carefully planned and perfectly maintained by foundations set up by his family and those he so generously blessed in the beginning. We fell in love with Bentonville, it is beautiful city with a lot of nature options built in. Sam Walton's legacy is still running strong in Bentonville and surrounding communities.
Although we can not recommend a place to stay because we mostly at this time traveled in our RV.
Let's start with where to eat. We travel in our RV so we mostly eat in our RV , but we did splurge one night at Table Mesa Bistro on the Bentonville Square. I did have
The night we got there we unhooked the camper at Blowing Springs RV Park and ran into town and toured the WalMart 5&10 General Store Museum. We really wanted to see where it all started. Though the museum was small it was packed with tons of history and ended up being the perfect way to start our tour of Bentonville. After leaving the museum it was dinner time and we ended up at Table Mesa Bistro. Both the museum and restaurant are located in the town square so was a short walk.
https://www.walmartmuseum.com/content/walmartmuseum/en_us.html
The next day we started at the Scott's Family Amazeum. "Scott" is the name of former Walmart CEO Lee Scott. The Amazeum is a world class children museum full of fun for all ages, be sure to check out the Hershey Lab and do the chocolate with chocolate, YUM!
Our next adventure brought us to Crystal Bridges Museum which is considered to be the best modern art museum in the area. It is sits on 120 acres and has many exhibits with exquisite grounds. Our favorite part was the Frank Lloyd Wright house, the home was not originally built here but was purchased by the foundation, carefully preserved, and moved to the museum grounds in 2013. We are huge Frank Lloyd Wright fans and since this is the closest Frank Lloyd Wright to our home we had to take advantage of it! Crystal Bridges has many world class permanent and travel exhibits including some out side sculptures and many walking trails. Lets not forget, the architecture of the museum itsself is pretty amazing!
Our next adventure was a little bit of an unexpected surprise! We met up with a friend for brunch at Louise at Thaden field. Let me explain... it is a restaurant perched on an airstrip! What, I know! Here is the story, Iris Louise McPhetridge Thaden was an Arkansas and native to Bentonville and an accomplished aviator! At Thaden field is a field house with many private aircraft coming and going. Bentonville is a very affluent area that ultimately it is a bunch of good ole Arkansas boys that have worked hard and become successful. We enjoyed brunch watching the many aircraft land right in front of us. Oh yeah, they also have toy planes for the kids to play in while you wait. It was by far our most memorable dinning experience to date.
Our last adventure is just north of Bentonville in Bella Vista the Mildred B Cooper chapel. The Mildred B Cooper Chapel was designed by E Fay Jones who was a protege of Frank Lloyd Wright. Yes we are geeks for architecture! There was a wedding there that even but if you know me I can be quiet as a mouse, some would say stealth (I used to plan big events). So I took the trail around the chapel and went into to see. The wedding was not in progress, it was breathtaking! There is another one of E Fay Jones chapels in Eureka Springs, AR. We have not visited that one yet.
