Arkansas was one of our most-anticipated destinations. It had been a state totally new to us. We knew there were lots of outdoor activities to partake, and a major city to explore.
Based on our Tulsa experience, we were eager to try another Army Corps of Engineer campsite.
We picked what may be the most beautiful federal campground in the nation. Seriously. The reviews are phenomenal, and they are right.
It’s called Maumelle Park, right along the Arkansas River. The spaces are well spaced-out, and under mature trees. Nature trails cut through the park and campground.
On our first morning there, I talked to a couple walking past Prufrock. They told me they drive to the park almost every day for a three-mile walk. Around a campground.
We were astounded when we got off the highway to head there. The businesses, and then the homes near the park, were the highest-end we’ve seen. We arrived after dark, despite my vow never to do so. It led to a bunch of confusion and stress. I’ll save the full description for the “technical section” below.
The park is located right next to the Little Rock Yacht Club. Does that sound like an oxymoron? It’s not.
On our first full day in Arkansas, our primary goal was a visit to the William J. Clinton presidential library. We’d love to eventually get to a bunch of presidential libraries, but we’ve only been to a very few, including the Carter Center in Atlanta, which is excellent. The Reagan and Eisenhower libraries would be at the top of our list – lest you think we’d limit our stops to only one political party.
Bill Clinton was a pivotal political figure in our lives, and he was a happy warrior.
He perpetually fought hard, from behind. As the museum reminded us, Clinton lost his first reelection for Arkansas governor – a rebuke of his arrogance — then came back and won three more two-year terms.
He earned the nickname ‘The Comeback Kid’ after losing the Iowa caucus in 1992. He was underwater in the polling in 1995, and pulled out his 1996 reelection.
Given our political state today, it’s shocking to think about 1992, when Clinton bucked conventional wisdom and picked Al Gore, a fellow young white male southerner, to be his running mate. As the New York Times put it at the time, “if elected, Mr. Gore, 44 years old, and Mr. Clinton, 45, would be the youngest team to make it to the White House in the country’s history.”
Add their ages, and it’s 89 years. That’s just nine years younger than Joe Biden is now.
With youth comes energy and audacity.
Clinton and Gore tackled health care, inequality, education and AIDS. Heck, as vice president Gore reinvented government and even invented the internet. What a time! I was a public policy student then. It was all kind of heady.
The museum contained binders with the presidential daily schedule for every day that Clinton was in office. I sent our kids images of what Clinton was doing on each of the days they were born.
Despite all kinds of challenges – economic collapses in Mexico and South Korea, the Oklahoma City bombing, a war in Kosovo – the 1990s seem much simpler. Clinton did not have to contend with Vladimir Putin or a China bent on domination. But he went toe-to-toe with Newt Gingrich, and stood firm on Medicare and Social Security.
It’s short walk from the library to the River Market district in Little Rock.
We had an early dinner of fried catfish and oysters at Flying Fish. It was delicious, casual and we highly recommend it.
We saw a bunch of sites as we walked around downtown: what passes for the actual little rock – or Petite Roche – that gives the city its name; some frontier cabins that are part of an historic display.
We had a memorable chat with a guitar-playing busker who stopped us to say hello as we headed to our car. He grew up a few miles away, and had been a trucker for years; he knew the distance between Baltimore and Washington from memory and experience. He shared tales of his travels all over the Pacific Northwest elsewhere. He started playing Hotel California, for no particular reason, as we walked away. It is conversations like these that make travels with Prufrock memorable remarkable.
The next day, we had our first paddle-boarding of this trip. Karen lives for this. We set our alarm so we could be on the water for sunrise on the river. As did about a dozen fishing boats who were having a contest that day.
After the paddle, we once again headed out for a mid-distance run on the phenomenal river trails that Little Rock and Pulaski County have built along the river.
We started at Two Rivers Park, and headed out to cross over the Big Dam Bridge (man, we should have bought a T-shirt with that name), which bills itself as “the longest pedestrian and bicycle bridge in North America, built specifically for that use…..its massive 4,226 foot span built atop Murray Lock and Dam.” If we wanted to, we could have run from Two Rivers all the way to the Clinton Bridge in Little Rock. These paths are an amazing resource for the region.
We picked a slightly upscale restaurant for our last meal in Little Rock: YaYas Euro Bistro, in the Chenal neighborhood. The food was fresh and tasty, and the service was attentive.
Because we spent so much time at Maurelle Park, we drove away feeling that we only scratched the surface of Little Rock, despite three night’s sleep there. We never saw Central High School; we missed a lot of neighborhoods. But we loved what we did see.
Technical notes
I hate arriving at new places at night, especially campgrounds. It’s so hard to orient yourself, and a little scary. But we got a late start from Tulsa, so got to Maumelle Park at about 7:45 p.m., nearly 40 minutes after sunset.
We had reserved spot C 11. We drove around and around at 5 miles an hour, looking for the C loop, then for space 11. When we finally found it, it looked like it was occupied. So frustrating. So we picked a nearby empty spot – C8. But to get into the space, I had to back in, and cut to the right.
Backing up is hard. This was our hardest ever. I was sweating, and inching back and forward, seemingly always going in the wrong direction. We hadn’t eaten dinner. We were hungry, and tired, and I wanted to give up and pull off to another parking area and just stay there.
But I kept at it, and got into decent position, albeit a little crooked.
When the sun came up, I reassessed. It turns out, space C11 wasn’t occupied, but it shared an entrance driveway with C 10, and the vehicles there were cutting off access to C 11. There’s no way we would have gotten in anyway.
C 8 wound up being a gorgeous spot. With the sun out, I saw a straighter back-in route I could have taken (by going off the edge of the driveway). And, when it was time to re-hitch, we were able to straighten out Prufrock with an easy push. A bonus of a lightweight fiberglass camper.
I’ll be perpetually shell-shocked by that dark back-in adventure, but we got through it. While parked at Maurelle, I noticed another “leak” near our hose connection. I thought at first it was a gray-water hose hole, but now I think I just had a faulty hose connection and water was overflowing. We will see. Hoses are always hard, even at home. I almost never get a leak-free connection. Why is that?
