After spending a week in Hot Springs, AR, we headed northwest to stay in the Bentonville area for a week.
Bentonville is the home of Walmart and even has a Walmart Museum, but there’s a lot more to northwest Arkansas than that and we enjoyed our time there much more than we’d expected.
None of the things we did really warranted separate posts in their own right (other than a quirky thing that Shae will be writing about in a couple of days), so here’s a roundup of everything we did during that week.
Where We Stayed
We stayed the entire week at this Airbnb in Garfield, a small town about 25 minutes northeast of Bentonville. Garfield doesn’t have much to it, but we chose to stay there as there was a good value Airbnb. It only cost $78.98 per night, but the net cost was $71.08 as we paid with Airbnb gift cards bought at a 10% discount.
The property itself was far from being the greatest Airbnb we’ve ever stayed at as it was fairly basic. The bedroom had thin sheer curtains and so it got bright in the morning, the kitchen setup was a little goofy as it seemed to have industrial equipment and some of the apartment wasn’t the cleanest. However, it was priced low compared to everything else in the area, it was quiet and spacious, plus there was a decent-sized fenced in backyard for Truffles to run around in, so overall we did enjoy our stay there.
What We Did
Walmart Museum
Bentonville is where Walmart started and is where its headquarters is based, so it wasn’t too surprising to discover that there’s a Walmart Museum.
We got a little unlucky with our timing though. Walmart is in the process of renovating the museum and so its regular location is currently closed while they make it bigger and better, with the new museum due to open in Spring 2024.
In the meantime, they’re running the Walmart Museum Heritage Lab in a different building which still manages to share a lot of the history of Walmart.
This temporary museum has interesting exhibits, a scavenger hunt for kids and interactive information displays, along with a hologram of Sam Walton where he answers questions with replies he gave while still alive. It’s all about the glory of Walmart and we were there for its shopaganda.
Bentonville City Square
After finishing up at the museum, we took a wander into the center of Bentonville to get some ice cream (more about that in the food and drink section below). It seemed like a really cute downtown area with a nice city square, lots of local restaurants and stores and more. It also seemed very popular with cyclists.
Crystal Bridges Museum Of American Art
Shae and I aren’t really art people, but several people had recommended visiting Crystal Bridges. We still might not have gone if all there was to it was an art museum, but we saw that they have expansive grounds with art throughout which is pet-friendly, so we headed there one morning to take a look and get Truffles out and about.
If you’re a Frank Lloyd-Wright fan, the Bachman-Wilson House is at Crystal Bridges. We only viewed the exterior, but they offer paid guided tours if you’re interested.
There were some interesting sculptures in the gardens and we had beautiful weather to explore the grounds.
Thorncrown Chapel
On a day out to Eureka Springs, we stopped along the way at Thorncrown Chapel, a chapel built by Jim Reed that opened on July 10, 1980.
It’s beautiful inside and is in a stunning setting that probably looks particularly amazing in the fall or when there’s snow on the ground.
Eureka Springs
We already had Eureka Springs on our list of possible places to visit. Shae and I were in two minds as to whether to make it a priority, but we got chatting to someone in Rogers (a neighboring city of Bentonville) who also highly recommended visiting Eureka Springs.
As a result, we decided to head there on our final day in the Bentonville area after we’d finished working for the day and it was a great choice. I can see why people love it so much as it’s a small, quaint town that had a great vibe to it.
Working Bunnies at East By West
One reason we’d been interested in visiting Eureka Springs in the first place is because there’s a store there called East By West. They feature Working Bunnies who assist the cashier with the transaction, passing your credit card, receipt, etc. with their mouth. It’s a fun, quirky experience that Shae will wrote more about here which also includes a video of the experience.
Fort Smith National Historic Site
On our way from Hot Springs to the Bentonville area we stopped for lunch at Fort Smith National Historic Site to have a quick look around. Shae wanted to spend more time there, but we wanted to get to our Airbnb that day, so we stopped back at Fort Smith again on our way to Little Rock after finishing our time in Bentonville.
Fort Smith was created to address tensions on the border of Arkansas and the Indian Territory and housed a courthouse and jail. After years of corruption, Judge Isaac Parker became the judge. He cleaned up the courts while the US Marshals worked out of Fort Smith to bring outlaws – hiding from the law in the Indian Territory – to justice.
There are gallows on the site too, although they’ve been recreated based on a sketch of the original gallows. People used to sleep beneath the gallows the night before a hanging in order to get the best spot for the hanging the next day.
Where We Ate & Drank
Red Barn Donuts
While driving through Rogers one day we spotted a donut place called Red Barn Donuts, so we stopped there for breakfast one morning, then returned the day we left Bentonville.
The donuts didn’t rival those from places like Round Rock Donuts, Hurts Donut and Beiler’s Donuts, but they were pretty good.
Bike Rack Brewing Co
Seeing as it was such a nice day out when we visited Crystal Bridges, afterwards we decided to visit a couple of pet-friendly breweries as we had Truffles with us.
We started off at Bike Rack Brewing where I had a Coconut Medusa which is a barrel aged imperial stout and Shae got a Hibiscus cider from Black Apple Cider.
Bentonville Brewing Co
Later on we visited Bentonville Brewing Co. They offered the same Hibiscus cider from Black Apple Cider so Shae got another of those. I decided to try the Natural State Porter from Bentonville Brewing Co which was very good.
The Spark Cafe
I think The Spark Cafe in Bentonville is normally housed in the Walmart Museum, but with renovations going on at the moment it’s in a food truck outside. The employee at the temporary museum recommended getting ice cream from there, so we walked over to try it out.
I was interested in their salted caramel, but when looking at the menu I knew I had to get the vanilla. Vanilla ice cream would normally be far from my first choice, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to have a special blue and yellow ice cream seeing as those are Walmart’s colors!
BREWS
While in Eureka Springs we stopped in at a pet store and the owner recommended BREWS as a pet-friendly spot to have a drink. It was an excellent suggestion as we got chatting to a group of local residents who were all extremely welcoming and lovely (hi Ty and everyone else!). We ended up having so much fun that we decided to hang out there for 2-3 hours chatting with them rather than exploring Eureka Springs even further.
[…] to Little Rock, but our drive ended up being much longer than that. We’d stopped at Fort Smith National Historic Site for a couple of hours along the way, then had to divert via Hot Springs. That’s because […]