My Arkansas Travelogue - part 1

I've been promising for weeks now to post some pictures from our weekend trip to Arkansas. This first batch will probably be boring as it's all garden shots.

We stopped on a whim at the botanical garden in Fayetteville. We were pleasantly surprised at how nice it is.

There are whimsical sculptures everywhere.

These chairs are concrete with a glass mosaic worked in the back. Some kind of moss made for a seat cushion.

In case you can't tell what it is, this arch is made of various garden tools.

A little area of fairy houses.

There are lots of bridges, nooks & crannies to explore. I think even kids would enjoy this place. The train is concrete.

We didn't venture to this building. It was a pretty warm day and getting warmer! I would suggest visiting at the peak of spring, when there's lots of flowers blooming, but aim for cool temps.

You'll see lots of colorful birds in a quiet & peaceful setting in this particular area where there are several feeders and benches for the humans.

There's a butterfly garden/house. We worked up a sweat trying to photograph the butterflies. Then all at once, every one of them stopped in place. Do they have some kind of buzzer only they can hear that tells them it's break time - like some kind of butterfly union? It was weird!

Our favorite stop. Twin swings! I would love this in my backyard.

I couldn't decide which one to post...

I want to say this was called the Asian garden, but now I don't remember. That's a big insect sculpture to the right, below.

A grass hut in the tropical section.

This would be a nice stop on any day trip from the Tulsa area or NW Arkansas. Check it out!

My Arkansas Travelogue - part 2

We actually made two trips to Arkansas. We were supposed to go in April when the Steampunk Festival was in Van Buren, but I got the flu and we had to reschedule. We figured we'd wait until after Mother's Day. The plan was to enjoy the ride over, shop the little town, spend the night and take the train excursion the next day.

Most people who know me think I'm fairly organized and would probably be surprised that I'm not much of a trip planner. I always assume we can figure it out when we get there. That has rarely worked out, by the way. You would think I would learn.

#1 -- if there's no special event in Van Buren, it's pretty much a ghost town. We only found 2 antique stores open. In fact, it was so slow, the shop owner of one place wasn't even in the store! We wandered all around his establishment thinking how odd it was open but apparently deserted. We found him visiting another owner down the street. Must be a trusting guy.

Then we went to the depot to get our tickets for the next day and found out the train doesn't run on Sundays from Van Buren! The depot had some nice vintage displays and a big ol' running train set. I took a few phone pix and picked up a little brochure with a schedule that said the train leaves Sundays at 12:30 from Springdale to VB round trip.

That's not so far away - just an hour's drive, so the plan was to go to Springdale the next day and hop the train for the round-trip Springdale-Van Buren run (which sounds goofy, since we were staying in VB!). Well, apparently that brochure was incorrect because when we got to Springdale the next morning, the depot was closed up and that area of town totally deserted, not a soul in sight. The only thing worth seeing was this old fashioned sign at Tyson's chicken hatchery.

After that failed attempt, we started looking for something else to do. That's when we stumbled on the botanical garden, which I posted here. Actually my whole Arkansas Travelogue is out of order - kinda like the first trip was! Hope you're following my train of thought ok. (no pun intended)

Anyway, after the botanical garden visit, we said, "hey! let's drive out and see what this big ol' mountain is all about!" That would be Mt. Magazine. It's the highest point in the state.
 

It was a pretty drive out there and would be gorgeous in the fall. It turned out to be farther than expected (again, you would think I would learn). We mini-hiked to an observation area, enjoyed the view, and headed back to the car to begin the next quest - DINNER! Trust me, coming from Tulsa with its overwhelming choices of restaurants, we might as well have been in the desert. I did see a couple spots on the way that might have been interesting photo ops, but decided to go easy on hubby. (Usually, it's "STOP! I want a picture of that!" as he obligingly slams on the breaks). Here's a link to the website in case you ever want to check it out. Mt. Magazine State Park.

Next post - JunkFest!

My Arkansas Travelogue - part 3

So now you know about our first trip to Arkansas which, at best, was serendipitous. The good news, besides seeing some really beautiful scenery, was we found out the following week was JunkFest in Van Buren. That sounded promising. Determined to get that train ride in, we had a new and better plan.

We reserved our tickets online and decided we could do this in one day, rather than have another hotel & dog boarding expense. We got on the road early, armed with coffee and granola bars, and headed back to Springdale.

The station was alive this time - completely opposite of the previous week. We enjoyed the little museum. The station was decorated for Memorial Day and the Veterans did a color guard presentation before the boarding call. It was a  heartwarming start to our adventure.
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All aboard!

All the pictures on this post are from the cell phone. I didn't want to carry my big ol' camera & try to shop at the same time.

We love train rides. Two ladies, at least in their mid-70s were the hostesses. Bless their hearts, they worked hard juggling coffee and snacks. One of them gave a running commentary on the things to see along the way.

Unfortunately, there's not a lot to see between the two towns. Just a lot of the backside of the small towns the train passes by and hills in the distance. Again, it would be much prettier in the fall.

We arrived in Van Buren! Had a yummy lunch at Boomerang Cafe and then began the junk-festing.

Clearly, we were in Trump Country :)

The architecture is cool. 1800s kind of stuff.

There's so much wonderful history in these old towns west of the Mississippi. It's too bad most of them faded away. They were once thriving with business, outlaws, steamboats, gambling, music, hopes & dreams.

Junking was fun. Here's what I got...

This is the kind of phone we had growing up. I used to have nightmares that there was some kind of danger and I was desperately trying to call the operator but couldn't get the dial to go all the way around to 0. I told the shop clerk about it and she said she wouldn't want anything around that reminded her of a nightmare. I said I'll use it to face my fear, lol. If nothing else, these things are so heavy, you could knock someone out with it!

This vase is Polish crystal and it was only $6. I bought cobalt crystal candlesticks at a factory store when we visited Poland in the 90's. I thought it would go great with them, plus I loved the color & shape of the vase.

Here's the vase in my china cabinet.

I think this might have been a 45 record case back in the day. I'm going to clean off the rust & spray paint it to hold my embroidery software CDs.

What the heck is this and why would you buy it? Why, these are rusted bed springs! Who wouldn't want a few of these! Some enterprising individual knew somebody like me would come along and pay a buck apiece for them. They had a whole big basket of them.

I don't know why I'm drawn to rusted things. I love to photograph old, rusty junk. Maybe it's the color and texture. Maybe it's the history it holds.  I can see these springs with beads & stuff woven thru them for forest fairy dolls. That's the plan right now, anyway.

As you can see, I'm not a true antiquer and definitely not a big spender! I just like to find stuff that can be repurposed for storage, art assemblage, or funky art dolls.

Depending on whether you scroll up or down, the last post is about Ft. Smith.