Bentonville to Hot Springs

Nancy scoured Yelp for dentists in Bentonville and selected Dr. Rinehart as the man best qualified to cure my toothache.  He pulled that pesky molar at lower right that had been on death watch for a couple of years and sent me away on heavy drugs.

After an evening of recuperation we visited the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, which is an impressive architectural achievement in a beautiful natural setting.  Some of the galleries were closed for updating, but there were still plenty of interesting exhibits.

One of the museum docents told us that the economic engine of Arkansas is not in its capitol, Little Rock, but in the northwestern corner of the state - especially Bentonville, the national headquarters of the Walmart juggernaut, where the unemployment rate is under 3%.  Downtown Bentonville is booming, and a new state-of-the-art cooking school has been established nearby.  He said that they consider Little Rock, which we liked, economically troubled and crime-ridden.

The museum grounds include a Frank Lloyd Wright house that had been transported from its original location in New York and reconstructed, piece by piece.

Not ones to let a pulled tooth keep us from a good meal, we ate at The Preacher's Son near the Bentonville town square.  It's a fancy restaurant in a spectacular setting - that of a restored church.  We only gave the food a B+ but it was a lovely evening.  There are lots of appealing restaurants and shops around the picturesque town square.  Interestingly, in this town dominated by the ultimate chain store - Walmart - the downtown doesn't allow chain stores (which might spoil the ambience).

The cold weather was beginning to wear on us California creampuffs, so we decided to head south, down to the Gulf Coast.  We had one more stop in Arkansas - the city of Hot Springs - which turned out to be fascinating.  There are a number of springs in the current Hot Springs downtown area naturally producing water at 143 degrees, without the sulfur stink of many other hot springs, and there have been spas there since the 19th century and earlier.  Bathhouse Row, in the Central Avenue Historic Center, consists of eight magnificent mansions, side by side, one of which - the Fordyce Bathhouse - is now a museum that lets you walk through and imagine what a bath there was like a century or so ago.  Here is its elegant Music Room.

Another of those bathhouses still offers bath experiences at $33 for the following: immersion in the hot waters, the application of hot packs, time in a steam cabinet, and a needle shower, the whole thing lasting 50 minutes or so.  Quite reasonable.  We're beginning to regret that we didn't take the opportunity.

Hot Springs has a fascinating history even aside from its bathhouses, including baseball spring training, gambling, and gangsters, including Al Capone.  In 1852 Congress designated Hot Springs as a federal reserve, and it became a national park in 1921.

So what do we make of Arkansas?  I never expected it to be among our favorites, but like Texas it was full of surprises.  Nancy thinks we should add Bentonville to our list of possible future homesites.  Friendly, intelligent people, a good food scene, pretty scenery, and low (but rising) real estate prices.