Bentonville, AR

The next afternoon we headed to Bentonville, about 20 minutes away. We grabbed lunch at Bentonville Brewery. The burgers were great, as was the beer. It was another beautiful day, so we sat outside. The town has character, and it was nice to walk around it. Reminds me a little of Ghent–art, good food, walkability.

There’s even an art museum: Crystal Bridges Museum sounds like Chrysler Museum. This museum has the Chrysler beat, though. It does have a lot more space to use; Chrysler is wedged in between some busy streets. We didn’t go into the museum; instead, we walked the sculpture path and saw the Frank Lloyd Wright house they had on display.

We chose to park in town and walk through the public trails to get to the museum. That was a good call – they have a nice park along the river. They’ve even built a really nice mountain bike path with stone banked corners! Those were impressive. We saw lots of people enjoying it.

I saw many of these trees with some bark removed to show white underneath – but only at the top. I don’t know what species they are. Ben thought they may be ash trees. I did see a lot of gum trees. Flashbacks to when I was a kid barefoot and stepping on those awful gum balls.

This spider sculpture is called Maman, by Louise Bourgeois. It was my favorite. Louise sees spiders as caring, helpful and hard working, like her mother.

Here’s a shot of the museum. I guess the museum buildings are the crystal bridges. We had imagined there was a town bridge called Crystal Bride. Nope.

Here’s the Frank Lloyd Wright house. It was brought down from New Jersey. It’s current resident likes to curl up outside.

There are tickets to go inside, so we just walked around the outside. I’ve learned that the phone takes pretty good photos to see inside when close to the glass. We were able to see a lot this way.

We walked back into town to the Taproom to watch the rest of the men’s world cup game, the US-Iran game. The US won, making it to the knockout round (surprising me). Because of the settlement with the women’s team, both teams now split any winnings from world cups. When I first read this, I thought – how unfair! The women win cups and the men can barely qualify. What I didn’t realize is how drastic the gap is between prize money for the men and women tournaments. In splitting the money for this win, the women’s team is getting more money than they did when they won the championship in 2019. Wow! So while it sucks that the men’s team then got crushed by the Netherlands, I’m glad they advanced to that round. We won’t make it to Australia/New Zealand for the 2023 games, but maybe if we get to the 2027 cup, we’ll see the first women’s world cup with equal prize money. Who knows!

The Taproom was a decent size dive bar that was blasting 80’s music as we walked in. We were the only ones there besides the bartender and her friends. I mean, it was 3pm on a Tuesday afternoon. They had a great beer selection, and I chose to enjoy the Trash Panda IPA by Lost Forty out of Little Rock. We watched 80’s music videos while being serenaded by the bartender and her friends as they warmed up for that night’s karaoke.

Neither Ben nor I could figure out this sculpture below. There are basketballs glued to the ground around it. But the green penguin gets to look at it day and night. It’s outside a 21c hotel.

We headed to one last brewery on our way home. It’s near a food market, so we figured we could grab food as well. We could have, if only places were open. Luckily, there was a cheese shop open, so we had cheese and crackers with our beer. Very good cheese I might add. After a tasting, we headed back for dinner. Tomorrow we head over to a winery in Oklahoma.