November 6--- The Perpetual Tourist

The other day when we were walking in search of Little Rock Visitor Center, I remembered the other name that I thought of for this blog, “The Perpetual Tourist”. At the time, we were both irritable and I was wondering whether I would ever like anything about this way of living, going from one historical marker to another. There wasn’t anything better to do, so I just carried on. On that day, we went to the Old State Capitol Museum. Neither of us was very impressed with it. It doesn’t hold a candle to the Old State Capitol in Springfield. Eventually we found ourselves walking down by the river’s edge where we found a sculpture garden.
By the end of the day this way of life didn’t seem so pointless. A beautiful fall day and the Arkansas River provided a frame for sculpture and landscaping that was thoroughly enjoyable. We even saw the little rock or “la petit roche”
that marked a ford on the river in the days of the French trappers after which this city was named. We’ve been here for several days now and spent some time at the State Capitol
where there is a picture of Bill Clinton as governor looking like not much more than a child. We went to the National Historic Site  museum across from Central High School which was the centerpiece of the move to integrate schools in 1957 and heard the story of the brave teenagers who found themselves in the middle of it all. The next day we joined with a group of 9^th graders and got to see the inside of the school. It is still a regular high school and school was in session.

We had dinner at “The Flying Fish” with some friends who moved here 30 years ago from Springfield. We caught up on stories of our children, work, and remembered our time together on a co-rec volleyball team that played at the Armory in 1984. Yesterday we toured Heifer Village by the Heifer International World Headquarters and learned about the good work they do. Today we spent a few hours at the Bill Clinton Presidential Museum reviewing his presidency and had lunch at a very elegant restaurant called “42”. The sun is back today after being blocked by rain for the last 2 days so we spent some more time just walking around the river walk.

This place we are staying is called Downtown Riverside RV Park.

It is located on the inside of the sea wall in North Little Rock across the river from the city and next to the I-30 bridge. From here we can see the the skyline. We have 2 pedestrian bridges and 3 automotive bridges within a mile of us. At night all of the bridges are lit up providing a sparkling panorama from our windshield. We have a couple of more days here before we move down to Louisiana.