Walmart country

We liked Eureka Springs a lot, but after four days we were ready to move about fifty miles over to Bentonville, Arkansas, which has several museums we wanted to visit.  The problem on the morning of departure was that not only had our water supply pipes frozen, so had the two holding tanks.

One of those tanks - the black water tank - holds toilet waste and the other - the gray water tank - holds the water that drains from the shower and the two sinks.  Both tanks were close to full, and I had planned to empty them before we drove away.  But when I tried to pull the levers to drain them, neither side worked.  This was the morning after the 11 degree nighttime temperature, and my conclusion was that the waste liquid in each tank had frozen solid, a circumstance which I didn't anticipate might happen.  One's first concern might be that we sure don't want a limit on what we could deposit into the toilet, but the other tank - the gray water tank - also has an issue; once it is full, any additional waste water from the sinks will raise the level up over the floor of the shower.  In the past, once or twice I've been slow to drain that holding tank and ugly, cloudy, slightly tan sink water covered the shower bottom an inch deep.  Yuck.

Our circumstances were desperate.

When we arrived at our RV park in Bentonville, I propped up our small electric heater on the lip of  an exterior compartment so that it blew warm air against the two plastic holding tanks, in fervent hopes of melting the disgusting icebergs inside them.  I'm happy to report that after an hour of warming, everything worked.  I successfully drained both tanks, and we were able to resume normal activity.

Motorhome life at its best.

Bentonville was the home of Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart and Sam's Club, for much of his life.  The first variety store he owned was here, as is the current Walmart home office.  The remaining Walton family is supposedly the richest family in America, and they have funded the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, supposedly one of the best art collections in the US.  That museum was the main reason we came to Bentonville.

Sam's original five and dime store was in downtown Bentonville and remains as the entrance to the Walmart museum, which tells us how Walton revolutionized American commerce.

Bentonville also has a Native American History Museum, which contains wonderful displays of artifacts from many Indian tribes, plus the skeleton of a wooly mammoth, which may have been hunted by native Americans.  I'm the one on the left.

On a personal note, I have a toothache.  Hurts like the devil.  It's my second molar at lower right, and before we tour the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, I have to get it fixed.  I've made a dental appointment for tomorrow.