We stayed in Arkansas just one night – in Texarkana. The city of Texarkana straddles the state line between Texas and Arkansas. But trust me, we did stay overnight on the Arkansas side! On our way out of Arkansas to Tennessee, we made some side trips.

We didn’t think we really had time to go to Bill Clinton’s Presidential Library in Little Rock, so we went to Hope, Arkansas, his birthplace. We toured the house where he lived the first 4 years of his life with his mom and grandparents. His father tragically died in a car crash 3 months before he was born. It was fun to hear how his early years there shaped his future. Also cool that his grandmother wrote in a letter when he was 4 years old, that they bought him a roll top desk because he was going to be President of the United States one day and needed a desk!

After stopping in Hope, we did go to Little Rock and stopped at the visitor’s center for the history of the Little Rock Nine and Central High School, and the protest that happened in 1957. Critical history in the Civil Rights Movement that I really didn’t know much about. Central High School is still there and is a public 4-year high school and is basically unchanged. The visitor’s center is just across the street from the high school so the pictures from 1957 could easily be matched up to the current day scene.