Hello, and welcome to Walmart!

Call me a snob for being surprised, but we arrived in Northwest Arkansas to discover that it’s full of world-class art, dining, museums, and mountain bike trails and it’s mostly because of—

Walmart.

We began our trip to Walmart, I mean Arkansas, with a chance to reconnect with our old Appalachian Trail thru-hiking partner, Pinecone. He showed us around Fayetteville for the night and was an excellent tour guide of all things Northwest Arkansas.

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Our ultimate destination was base camp at Prairie Creek Campground on Beaver Lake, for mountain biking in nearby Bentonville, which has proclaimed itself to be the “mountain bike capital of the world”.

Had to see if it was true.

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After we set up camp, it was time to check out some art. I’m not sure if everyone in the Bentonville community gets a commission or something, but quite literally everyone I spoke to on my first day in Arkansas told me I had to visit Crystal Bridges.

It’s an American Art Museum founded in 2005 that sits on a 120-acre park and was founded by—

Walmart.

So I went.

On Tuesday.

Guess what day the museum is closed?

There was, however, an open museum right in downtown Bentonville.

The Walmart Museum!

I’m not kidding.

So I did that on my Tuesday-the-Museum-is-closed, (rather than suffer mild heat exhaustion, as Arkansas is just as hot as New Orleans).

The Walmart museum was Walton’s 5 & 10, the original store where Sam Walton purchased Luther Harrison’s Variety Store on the town’s central square in 1950, and then expanded it in 1951 to establish Walton’s 5 & 10, which later expanded into Target. I mean Wal-Mart. Which is now Walmart. Did you know they ditched the hyphen in 2018? One of the many fun facts you can learn at the Walmart musuem.

Walmart Museum highlights:

1. Sam Walton’s office, moved to the museum and recreated from photos after his death.

2. Defective products returned to Walmart, with a letter for explaining what was wrong with the product.

3. Sam Walton’s original 1979 Ford F-150 truck, with his direct quote “What am I supposed to haul my dogs around in, a Rolls-Royce?” Well played, Sam.

5. The Walmart Museum bathroom, which is wallpapered with Walmart flyers.

6. The woman at the Walmart selfie exhibit who took 19 photos of herself before she realized how to scan the QR code to upload her photo to her phone.

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When I went back to Crystal Bridges on Wednesday, the museum was open.

I spent hours wandering around and checking out the historic and contemporary art exhibits. Yayoi Kusama’s artwork, Infinity Mirrored Room—My Heart is Dancing into the Universe and Amoskeag Mills #2 by Charles Sheeler are my favorites.

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The best part of Crystal Bridges was the outdoor art trail.

Crystal Springs Art Trail delivers outdoor art in quantity (and quality, presumably, but I’m no art critic). So I wandered the trails and was: embarrassed about my ability to interpret art, proud that I was still walking in the oppressive heat after 2 hours on the Art Trail, and guilty about my previous and vocal dislike of Walmart. The museum, the access, and the art trail are all free of charge, meticulously maintained, and informative but fun at the same time.

Yay, Walmart!

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On the same grounds of the trails is the Frank Lloyd Wright Bachman-Wilson House where I learned that I know as much about architecture as I do about art.

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Another Walmart fun fact: The Waltons are mountain bikers. And the Walmart Family Foundation has sunk more than $74 million into creating a system of trails and paved paths that are considered world class. I love me some best of/worst of superlative claims, so we visited the big three: Slaughter Pen, Coler Mountain Bike Preserve, and the Back 40 to see how world class we are.

Spolier alert: I am not world class. I am not country-class. Maybe, local-neighborhood-class. Is that a thing?

Me while riding at 5:30pm with an ambient air temperature of 96, real feel 105:

“It’s hot, this is too hard, I hate all these features, It’s hot, I can’t ride that, no one can ride that.”

-Cranky, hot and tired me

Me after riding at 8:00pm, in an air-conditioned brewery:

“The riding here is pretty epic, that was so much fun, I really need to learn how to ride some of these features.”

-reflective, cool, rested me

Call me fickle.

We rode Slaughter Pen, which despite the name, was full of swoopy, fast, beautiful machine-built trails and features where I could pretend I knew what I was doing. Most of the time. Then, we would encounter trails like Skidmark, a double-black diamond where I was immediately reminded of my neighborhood-class status.

Not pictured: all of the photos Jeff took of me walking around features like the Skidmark bridge, below.

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Then we rode Coler Mountain Bike Preserve, where I spent most of my time taking photos of Jeff riding things I wouldn’t even walk up. The Hub is the centerpiece of the Coler Preserve, and is a 20 foot tall monstrosity that requires more world-class-ness than I will ever have. Happily, the three trails you can ride from the Hub can also be accessed through less deadly means.

When I wasn’t holding my breath with the life insurance company on speed dial, I was consistently pulling my jersey off my back to attempt to air out and not smell like a sweat sock.

And I learned a new phrase today, after 20 years of mountain biking, I now know that a jump line means I will be going over progressively more intense rises until I am unceremoniously bucked off my bike into the tree/creek/cliff/lake, almost always in front of people that actually know how to do this.

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Our 20-mile loop on the Back 40 was significantly abbreviated by yet another flat tire, and the fact that my weather app was once again telling me I shouldn’t even be outside, much less exercising to capacity. Pinyon Creek and Summit School trails were the fun sections of our abbreviated 20 miles-becomes-10-miles-day on the Back 40. Summit School was a black diamond that warned about possible bridges, unavoidable drops, and exposed bluff lines. Just a regular Sunday morning ride.

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We gave up trying to be physically cool and decided to try to be socially cool by visiting New Province Brewing. It ticked all the boxes: namely, it was air-conditioned, had good craft beer at reasonable prices, and as an added bonus, kittens! I’m now trying to calculate how many kittens the square footage of the Scamp will accommodate. Lucky I am bad at math or we might have adopted a few.

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Outside of the Walmart influence is the town of Eureka Springs, about 45 minutes away from where we camped. The entire downtown area is on the National Register of Historic Places, but even more appealing to me, it is full of quirky and interesting sights.

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Since I can’t resist a good “best of/most of” let’s start with America’s Most Haunted Hotel.  The Crescent Hotel, which opened in 1886 to take advantage of the 60 springs in town which bubbled up “healing water”.

When grand hotels fell out of fashion (presumably because during the Great Depression most people couldn’t buy bread, much less luxury spa treatments in a Victorian hotel), it became a women’s college.

Then in 1937, Norman Baker an unlicensed doctor-impersonator-on-the-radio recreated it as the Baker Cancer Clinic.

Baker claimed to cure cancer with injections of watermelon seed and corn silk, among other things. Needless to say, he never cured anyone of anything and several people died as a result of his (lack of) care. He wound up spending some time in jail for fraud.

Not long enough, in my opinion.

Also of note: from the top floor you can pretend you’re in Rio de Janeiro and see a 67-foot statue of Jesus towering in the distance.

I had to see it close up.

And of course, I looked it up because I had to know where it stands on the list of unrivaled tourist attractions.

It’s the 11th tallest statue in the US and the 4th largest of Christ in the world.

Christ of the Ozarks is a 7-story concrete tribute to Jesus. It was built by Emmett Sullivan, who proclaimed it more beautiful than Michelangelo’s Jesus in the Pieta.

Wait a minute.

I’ve seen the Pieta in person at St. Peter’s Bascilia in Vatican City. And I’ve seen the Christ of the Ozarks.

As I’ve said, I am no art critic, so I’ll show you both photos side by side and let you decide, shall I?

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They also have a chunk of the Berlin Wall. Because— that’s what you do at the Christ of the Ozarks?

Continuing on with its objects of renown, Eureka Springs is also home to Thorncrown Chapel, an architectural wonder (apparently I use phrases like architectural wonder now) in the Ozark woods. The American Institute of Architects placed it fourth on its list of the top 10 buildings of the twentieth century. The glass walls are so crystal clear that you feel as though you are outside in the woods even when you are inside being told to lower your voice, and also made me glad it’s not my job to clean them.

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Northwest Arkansas. Everything you could want in the way of epic outdoor adventure, and odd, “I-never-knew-I-wanted-to-see-that-but-am-so-glad-I-did” attractions.

And don’t forget the mothership of 10,526 Walmart stores.

Happy trails!