The travel bug has been calling my name lately. We're more than a year from our last road trip (not counting our last minute trip back to Rockford. Visiting your hometown doesn't count. My definition of road trip is new adventure.) We're not able to go on a big trip for a while, since I'm 32 weeks pregnant. But, a weekend away to explore a new place? Absolutely.
We decided on Bentonville, Arkansas. We've never been there, and I've been dying to explore Crystal Bridges Art Museum. It is an art museum funded by Alice Walton and the Walton foundation. Admission to the permanent collection is funded by a grant from Walmart, so it's free! It has a temporary exhibit that cost $8, but they do free days a few times a month. Right now the temporary exhibit is from the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. It was definitely worth the $8.
I love art. I've been blessed to have visited several major art museums, including the Art Institute in Chicago, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, and The Prado in Spain. I know it's Arkansas… not necessarily the mecca of art. But I am telling you, that Crystal Bridges can hold it's own among these other art museums. The architecture alone is breathtaking. Crystal Bridges is surrounded by walking trails that have different sculptures amongst beautiful gardens. The permanent collection has a wide array of styles and time periods represented. There is an art exploration room for kids to play that my daughter did not want to leave. If you are interested in visiting you can visit the website crystalbridges.org
We didn't take any pictures inside the museum. We were busy trying to teach our 3 year old how to behave in an art museum. If you have never done this before, let me just say it was quite the task. It was worth it though, and we were still able to enjoy quite a bit of the museum. We did take quite a few pictures along the walking trail. It was a little rainy, but the walk was beautiful.
We decided the stay the night in Bentonville. We stayed at the 21 c Museum Hotel. It is connected to Crystal Bridges through one of the art trails. The hotel itself is full of art. They also have giant green penguins that are throughout the hotel, and they will send them up to rooms with kids. It hung out in our entryway during our stay. Let me tell you, when you get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom the penguin will freak you out. It happened every time. Here are some pictures of our room.
Our hotel was right between Crystal Bridges and the downtown Bentonville square. Great location. We walked the square. It was everything we love about historic downtowns. We explored some really cute specialty stores. The original Walton 5 & 10 is there. Connected to it is the Walmart Museum, which is free. We walked through it, and it was a decent little museum. My favorite part was the wall of things that had been returned and accepted by Walmart. A couple examples are a hand mixer the owner claimed was possessed, and a fishing pole returned because it wouldn't catch any fish. When you exit the museum you enter an old time soda shop/ice cream parlor. We really enjoyed the ice cream. Under the umbrella in the first picture is my daughter. Our hotel's umbrellas were ridiculously large.
We drove into Rodgers in the evening. We played at Barnes and Noble for a while. It has become a tradition to frequent bookstores, both local and chain, on our trips. We each picked out a book. Addie got a really cute T. Rex book that rhymed "cretaceous" with "good gracious". That's about as good as rhyming gets. Tyler picked up Game of Thrones. I picked up The Fault in our Stars. I started mine about 10 o'clock-ish and finished it about 2:30 a.m. How did I like it? Let me tell you….
If the phrase "I hate Nicholas Sparks" infuriates you, you will probably want to skip the next two paragraphs.
I hated it.
I'm sorry to everyone who loved it. I hate books/movies that are sad just for the sake of being sad. I also had figured out the entire plot just from watching the movie preview. I hate predictable. If you want to read a sad book that has quality characters and plot, then read The Book Thief. If you hate me, I'm sorry. I love books about as much as I love travel… but I am a self-proclaimed critic.
All in all it was an amazing weekend. New adventures, new book (even if I didn't love it), ice cream, and art. Pretty perfect.
I will end with our funny story from the weekend. Crystal Bridges was hosting a Drop-In Draw event in one of the galleries. The were handing out foldable stools, paper, and colored pencils and inviting you to pick a spot and try to draw the artwork. We got Addie some supplies, and let her determine where she wanted to sit. She picked a spot next to a sculpture of a nude woman holding an illuminated ball. Here is a picture of the sculpture. (picture is from Crystal Bridges website)
Addie sat there, putting her finger to her mouth and saying, "Hmmm.. now we need fingers… now we need toes."
You can imagine where this went. She then said "And here is the belly button… and here are the nipples…"
Here is a picture of Addie's interpretation of The Bubble, by Harriet Whitney Frishmuth.
This weekend is over, but the planning for our big road trip has begun. We have officially picked Texas for our destination. We will be going in October, before I go back to work. We were going to go in June, but with other barbers vacation schedules, plus getting cleared by the doctor it didn't work out. We decided this will be a great year to pick a destination that would be too hot to visit in the summer. Our route is going to take us through Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, and to Corpus Christi. We will be spending some time with my brother, who lives in Austin. We've never been to visit him before, and I'm really looking forward to exploring new places, and seeing Luke. He'll also have a new niece he'll get to meet then too :)
