Eureka Springs

The park we stayed at was about 7 miles from Eureka Springs, a cute little Ozark town nestled in the mountains.  Even though it was seven miles, the road going to Eureka Springs was narrow, steep, and winding making for slow traveling.  It took us about twenty minutes to reach town.

This is the Christ of the Ozarks statue.  We took this picture from the Crescent Hotel in downtown Eureka Springs.  The statue was created in 1966 by one of the sculptors who had worked on Mt. Rushmore and is 65.5 feet high.

We took the tram tour through town and learned more about it.  During the Civil War,  Dr. Alvah Jackson established a hospital located on a spring he had earlier discovered and treated his patients, both Union and Confederate, with the waters.  The springs became well known and people began visiting the area in search of medical cures.

The town was incorporated on February 14, 1880 and promoted it as a retirement community for the wealthy.  In 1889, Eureka Springs was the second largest city in Arkansas, just behind Little Rock.  Today, there are fewer than 3,000 people living here.

It's always been a tourist destination and in the 1930's this Rock Cottage Tourist Court was a popular destination.

Eureka Springs is truly a Victorian town with houses throughout the town sporting this unique style of architecture.

There were small houses

and large houses.

This house even has two addresses.  The left side of the house is on one street and the right side of the house is on another street.

The Crescent Hotel was built in 1886 

and is perched on top of a hill overlooking Eureka Springs.

From the front steps of the hotel, you can see St. Elizabeth's Catholic Church, the only church you enter through the bell tower.

We walked through the bell tower and a flower lined walk takes you to the church building.

This was Basin Spring Bath House downtown still stands, but now has little boutique shops inside instead of being a bath house.  There is a wooden covered bridge in front that goes across the main street to the other side.

Here is the City Auditorium which was built in 1928 and the first performance was by John Phillip Sousa and his 67 piece band.

There is even a Carnegie Library located here.

This was one of my favorite buildings,  the Flatiron Building.  The original building was built in 1880, destroyed by fire in 1890, another was built and it too was destroyed by fire.  This building was built in 1987.

There was a mural depicting the history of the town.

Homes are built on the sides of mountains.  From the front a house will look like a one story home and when you look at the back you see another three or four stories behind it.

There was this whimsical Humpty Dumpty sitting on the wall.

After our visit through downtown, we stopped at the Thorncrown Chapel on our way back to the campground. 

Thorncrown Chapel was the dream of Jim Reed who owned this piece of property and thought if he built a glass chapel in the woods, it would inspire visitors.  It was designed by architect E. Fay Jones and it is absolutely inspiring on the outside

and the inside!

Another neat thing is that the lights inside reflect the cross on the window, making an illuminated light on the forested background.

Eureka Springs is a beautiful place to visit!

White River and Pea Ridge National Military Park

Our campsite was on the White River just below the dam on Beaver Lake.  The water was really cold, 43 degrees!  One day there was a layer of fog just hovering over the river as well as the reflections in the water.  It was really beautiful.

Every afternoon between 1 and 2 p.m. a siren would blow and water would begin being released from the dam.  The amount of water released depended on how much electricity was being generated that day.  That would determine how high the water would go up in the afternoon.

This is what the river looked like just after the siren had sounded

and here it is a couple of hours later. The bottom walkway is covered as well as the rocks that were protruding from the left side of the picture.

Here's another before and after set of pictures.

The Pea Ridge National Military Park was just about 30 miles from us making it a great day trip.  Pea Ridge was one of the most pivotal Civil War battles deciding the fate of Missouri and the West.  On March 7-8. 1862, 26,000 Confederate and Union soldiers fought.

Our first stop was the Visitor's Center which had a great video on the battle for us to watch.

Pea Ridge is the most intact Civil War battlefield in the country.  There is a seven mile driving tour stopping at the major points of the battle.

You can see the entire battlefield from this point. It was extremely rare, but here you would have been able to see an entire army lined up for a fight with all regiments within sight of each other.  There was a sign saying that "if you had been standing here on March 8, 1862, you would have seen 10,000 Union men in battle lines stretching for a mile over the open fields below."

This was the Elkhorn Tavern which has been reconstructed from photos from the 1880's where fighting took place around it and the tavern was used as a field hospital.

We have visited other Civil War battlefields and it is a humbling experience to try to imagine just how horrible it was.  Through major mistakes by one of the Southern generals, the South lost the battle.

Many Union and Confederate veterans attended several reunions at the Pea Ridge battlefield promoting not only remembrance but healing.  

The veterans dedicated the first monuments to both the Union and Confederate dead.

After our visit to the battlefield, we drove over to Bentonville to visit Sam Walton's (Wal Mart) first store.  It was a five and dime store he opened up in 1950

right on the main street in downtown Bentonville.

There is a Wal Mart museum in there now that we enjoyed touring.  As you complete the tour, there is an old time soda shop where you can purchase goodies, a great way to end a day!

Mountain View, Arkansas

Last Sunday, we traveled a little over 100 miles from Little Rock to Mountain View,  Arkansas, a little town in the Ozarks known as the "Folk Music Capital of the World."

Music is an integral part of this town with less than 3,000 people.  The town is famous for the preservation of folkways and traditional music and in 1973, the Ozark Folk Center State Park was opened.

Visiting the state park is a look back into the Ozark culture as it is the only center that preserves the Ozark heritage.  More than 20 crafts are demonstrated throughout the park as well as classes are scheduled to teach others.

That is why we traveled on a Sunday, something we don't usually do.  I signed up for a two day soap making class.

I started Monday morning learning how to mix and prepare the ingredients as well as the process involved.  Here's my first batch poured in the mold.

I made two batches the first day and made soap bunnies, lotion bars, spritzers, bath salts, felt soap, and soap on the rope the second day.  I also took the soap from the day before out of the mold and cut it.

Now I have 50 bars of soap!  It was so much fun!

Getting back to Moutain View being the Folk Song Capital of the World,  local and visiting musicians  meet out on the square by the courthouse each evening to just "jam" out the mountain tunes.  There is also a program at the Ozark Folk Festival Auditorium each Wednesday thru Saturday nights where musicians perform songs from the culture.  Mountain View was just such a neat place, we hope to get back there again.

Today, we left to go further north to Eureka Springs.  We're staying at Beaver Lake about 10 miles north of town.

We have a great shaded site.

The river is right behind it, unfortunately, there are lots of trees and shrubs between us and the river, so we can't see it from the rig.  It is just a short little walk to this beautiful place.

We're looking forward to checking out the sights here.