From July 12-
We woke up, had some breakfast and had a couple of hours journey through the forest and hills of Mid Arkansas on our way up to the Northwest and the Bentonville area. It was really a pretty drive.
Factory stores are one of my favorite things on the planet and we were super excited to come across this Little Debbie one! It was fun to see all the things you don’t normally see, and I even found a couple of gluten free things for me and of course the girls picked out some treats.
Our real first destination was this drive through Safari. We love us a good Animal Safari.
This one was pretty huge. They had a big animal feeding area so we bought a few bags of seeds and bread and were pretty well ravaged by goats, cows, emus and other tiny farm animals.
Abbi made a little buddy just her size!
And Lilli made a little piggy friend.
I never, ever get to pet the kangaroos at the Nashville Zoo – and finally I met a friendly kangaroo!! Epic moment!
This was right during the huge Pokemon Go phase – and the Pokemon were all around!
They also had tons and tons of cages of various monkeys, tigers, lions, bears and pretty much every exotic animal you can think of. These little guys were our favorites – the little babies actually climbed out of the cage to bring the food in! So adorable.
The giraffes came in extra close for selfies! It was hilarious how friendly they were.
Abbi’s favorite animal. For real. She was all over this regular old cat.
And then we loaded up for their very long drive through park. This one didn’t allow you to feed from the car so it did get a little bit boring.
It didn’t stop this zebra from getting really close.
The emus were still interested, too.
And our favorites at the end – prairie dogs. We love, love, love prairie dogs.
We continued on to Bentonville and checked into our hotel for the night and went out to the pool. The girls had a lot of fun swimming and playing and we had it all to ourselves.
Bentonville is best known for being the home of the giant Walmart and there were tons of Walmarts, Walmart gas stations and Walmart test concepts there. It’s a really cute small city, all built around the massive Walmart companies. We went to the Walmart museum and Walton’s 5 and 10 where it all started.
It tells you all the history of Sam Walton and how Walmart got started, along with all kinds of fun mementoes from their history. Lots of things the kids could touch – including making us all name badge stickers. Of course they had to do that…..
A recreation of his office. Apparently he liked things a certain way and never really moved things around.
Afterwards when we went outside we saw this little replica of the truck he drove but we didn’t have any change for the girls – the cashier from the little Museum 5 and 10 store saw us and walked out with a handful of quarters for the machine. Apparently they pay for all the kiddos to take a ride. Abbi was THRILLED to drive the truck!
Lilli was too cool for school. But did it anyway. The Museum and Shop were really cute (and free!) and they also have an old timey soda fountain there.
Afterwards we walked around the square – were literally everyone was playing Pokemon Go! It was so nuts. Their square is really cute with a lot of really nice restaurants. AKA not kid friendly stuff. So we just got takeout instead near our hotel.
A family selfie – while Abbi was wandering around checking out everyone’s cars and their tires, her favorite past time.
And a look into our room at night on a trip. It takes a Kindle, two Ipads, two phones and Lilli’s IPhone (used as an Ipod) to survive. This isn’t the old days, Clark.