Civil War & Eureka Springs (Arkansas Adventure continues)...

Happy Monday All,

Hope everyone had a great weekend! As I posted over the weekend, last week I was up in Arkansas visiting my in-laws. I thought I'd use this week to document the trip (I took a TON of pictures!)

So Monday in Arkansas we didn't do too much. We had traveled all day on Sunday, so we took it easy. Tuesday we went to the Pea Ridge National Park where some of the Civil War was fought and we also headed into Eureka Springs.

Pea Ridge had a self-guided driving tour that was 7 miles long, and a visitors center. At the visitors' center we saw several exhibits, such as this cannon: 

 Along the driving tour there were other cannons marking battle grounds and lines where both the Union and Rebel soldiers lined up.

 The open spaces of the battle grounds gave me an eerie feeling...like I could sense the fighting that went on there. It's really something. The scenery is gorgeous now, but I can imagine it was incredibly bloody back then.  

One of the stops was Elkhorn Tavern, where they had supplies and a doctor. From what the man said, it doesn't sound like it was a very comfortable place to be. He described the smells and I wanted to shudder. Now it just smells musty, rather than of blood and death. It makes me glad we're more advanced now than we were during Civil War Times. 

Side view of Elkhorn Tavern

Below are pictures I took inside Elkhorn Tavern:

Parts of the area also were part of "The Trail Of Tears", too.

After visiting Pea Ridge National Park, we headed on the road to Eureka Springs. 

 Traveling through Mountains  means there is awesome scenery all around you! It was hard to capture absolutely everything, but I

guarantee you, we did our bests.

I wanted so badly to take photos of the valleys we saw, but it was always so hard to get a good photo when attempting such a feat in a moving vehicle. I think this photo was taken at a stop we made where they had a a outlook area where you could take photos and view the scenery. 

We finally made it to Eureka Springs and found the historical district.  It was adorable! I loved it.

My husband loved this. We didn't eat or go in here,
but he thought it was an awesome name for a place.  If you look down the sidewalk...those signs hanging were
in front of most of the shops, added to the little town feel of the place. I thought it all charming!

 We spent 3 hours there and I wish we could have stayed longer. The traffic was horrendous, but the little shops and food was really good. And the whole place was just as cute as can be--but I would recommend wearing walking shoes! Hills, rocky sidewalks, steep staircases gives you a workout. (Such as the staircase pictured in this photo...and yes, we climbed UP those stairs! My legs were burning afterward).

The fudge at Two Dumb Dames was amazing! We got Raspberry Cream Fudge and Chocolate. Both flavors were really, really good:

As we were getting into the car to leave, a familiar scent filled the air. I said to my husband, "I smell Honeysuckles!" He was ready to leave and get back to his parents' house, but I spun around and found where the scent was coming from. Just a few feet from me was a huge bush filled with the blossoms. Seeing the bush took me

back to when I was a kid in Madison, New Jersey. My sisters and I would pick Honeysuckle blossoms and suck the nectar out. I hadn't seen or smelled the flower in years. It was like getting a sense of home away from home. I was so overjoyed, I insisted upon getting a picture of the bush. Isn't that something? I didn't suck any of the nectar, but I had to have a picture. It's kinda hard to see the blossoms, because the flower itself isn't very big to begin with, but that's what they look like. It was marvelous to see that right before we headed back to my in-laws' place.

So that was Tuesday. Tomorrow I'll talk about our visit to the Botanical Gardens...there are so many photos I have to pick and choose what to post! 

Total photo count on camera (of all the pictures we took the whole time in Arkansas):  162 pictures. This does NOT include every picture we took on cell phones. 

So...are you into history or shopping? If you went to Pea Ridge National Park or Eureka Springs, what would you want to do?

Have A Marvelously Magical Monday!