Friday morning was easy to get moving since we had a pull through site the night before, nothing to hook up so we were on our way early. Our destination for the next 2 nights was another COE campground at the Pendleton Bend Park near Dumas, AR, a couple of hours south of Little Rock. The park was right along the Arkansas River, a very busy transportation route with barges moving up and down all day.
Our campsite was beautiful, lush and green and really spacious. The heat, humidity and bugs did make sitting outside a little uncomfortable but such a pretty setting once the air cooled off a bit.
Before getting to the park we stopped to visit the
Plantation Agricultural Museum near Scott, AR. What a wonderful exhibit! The museum is dedicated to Arkansas long and rich cotton industry and is housed in a former General Store built in 1912. The displays of the cultural history and equipment used in farming cotton was excellent, giving a real sense of life for slaves, sharecroppers and plantation owners.
Housed on the property is a reconstructed cotton gin, tractors and other large pieces of equipment.
A cotton crop is growing and planted in stages so you can see the development of the plant.
Cotton flower
Cotton Gin and seed warehouse
A post office had been added to the general store and is now a recreated plantation era kitchen.
The museum sits beside Horseshoe Lake in the Arkansas Lowlands, only 20 minutes south of Little Rock. We spent about an hour and a half seeing it all and by then it was time for lunch. We asked the ranger at the museum for a suggestion and she said the best place was right down the road. So we left the motorhome where it was and walked down to Cotham's Mercantile for a wonderful lunch! Yes...I know, it doesn't look like any place you'd stop for lunch but that's the beauty of it.
The building sits on stilts over the swamp land and must be at least 100 years old. The slogan for the restaurant is: "Where the Elite Meet to Eat". Evidently this is a favorite for all of Little Rock, even Bill Clinton when he's in town.
The interior is the original store but with tables all around and great food.
My order was fried green tomatoes and it was fantastic! My first taste of a wonderful southern dish.
Paul ordered the favorite on the menu, The Hubcap Burger...it was enormous!
As we walked back to our RV we saw other buildings still in use for cotton processing.
Saturday morning we visited another state historical site, The
Arkansas Post Museum. It's a complex of 5 historic buildings showing the history of Arkansas's Grand Prairie and Delta.
The 1877 Refeld-Hinman Loghouse is an example of how houses were built on the prairie.
A second museum down the road was the
Arkansas Post National Monument, once a trading post for the Quapaw village of Osotouy. The Post became part of the United States following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. By 1819 the post was a thriving river port and the largest city in the region and selected as the first capital of the Arkansas Territory.
It was a beautiful afternoon, no buildings left to explore only foundations and maps to show where the city once lay. We walked all around and were sure wishing we'd had our bikes with us. The park was empty, peaceful and had wonderful paved walkways. We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing at our campsite and visiting with our neighbor, a single independent woman about our age camping in her van with 2 dogs. Interesting woman and not homeless, just loves camping on her own.
We left on Sunday morning continuing south into Mississippi.
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