I have a tendency to plan trips when I’m bored. Most of the time, these planning sessions don’t lead to an actual trip, but rather an itinerary for some hypothetical time in the future… which is always nice when said hypothetical time presents itself and most of the planning is already done.
At some point last fall, I spiraled down a travel planning vortex that ended in Arkansas (don’t ask me how I got there, Arkansas was definitely not where I started). As it turns out, the airport, the highest point in Arkansas, and Arkansas’s only national park are all within a couple hours of each other. There are direct flights from Colorado. It seemed like an ideal 4-day weekend getaway.
Fast forward to this past Christmas, when I received as a gift one of those national park water bottles where you add a sticker for each park you’ve been to.
Fast forward another month, when my coworker asked me what plans I had to add more stickers in 2026. I had none. Or, at least, nothing concrete.
But that evening, with his question still in mind combined with a comment from my husband’s coworker about an airfare sale, I decided to check ticket prices. When a search turned up $63 roundtrip plane tickets and relatively inexpensive hotel and rental car prices (as it happens, February is not peak season in Little Rock), it was solidified: we were going to Arkansas.
In ten days!
Never in my life have I booked plane tickets just ten days before departure. I was oscillating between excitement for an upcoming trip and panic that I was forgetting something.
My panic, as it turns out, was misdirected. My itinerary was solid. It was the weather that had a different set of plans.
Our trip was the weekend after the massive winter storm that walloped much of the country, including Arkansas, with snow, sleet, and ice. They were still cleaning up from it when we arrived five days later and, in fact, some of our plans were thwarted by lingering snow and ice. Clearly there’s a reason February is not peak season in central Arkansas.
Anyway. We arrived around 2:00pm Friday and, after standing in the slowest-moving line ever, picked up our rental car. There was still snow on the ground, but most of the roads were fine. Despite that, everything we’d hoped to do in Little Rock was still closed. So we abandoned those plans, for now at least, and set off for the one hour drive to the town of Hot Springs, which would be our home base for the next two nights.
I’d found really cute accommodations for a really good price, and aside from having to set the heater at 80°F (27°C) to keep the room warm (buildings in Arkansas are not well-enough insulated to deal with overnight lows of 11°F/-12°C), we enjoyed our stay.
Saturday was spent exploring Hot Springs National Park, which I’ll write all about in an upcoming post.
On Sunday morning, we packed up and drove two hours north to Mount Magazine State Park, a journey that took us along the nausea-inducing but scenic Arkansas Highway 7 through the Ouachita Mountains.
(To be fair, it doesn’t take much to make me carsick, so this is less an assessment of the road and more a commentary on my wimpy stomach.)
Mount Magazine State Park is home to the highest point in Arkansas, which was the reason for our visit. More to come on this in a future post as well!
Monday morning, it was time to make the drive back to Little Rock. Our flight didn’t leave until 3:00pm, which meant we had some time… though not quite enough for everything we hadn’t been able to see on Friday. Two of the three were closed anyway, so that made our decision for us.
The one location that was fully open was the Arkansas State Capitol, so upon arrival in the capital city, we made our way there. The legislature was not in session, which meant we could park in any of the legislative spots. These spots encircle the entire building, so I have no idea where you’d park when the government was in session.
Guided tours happen on the hour, and we’d arrived at about 10:20am, so we decided to just follow the brochure and do a self-guided tour. Parts of all four floors are open to the public, so we followed the map through all of them.
(the court now meets in a separate building)
There are exhibits throughout the building as well, mostly focused on Arkansas history and government. We easily could have spent half a day here if we’d taken time to read them all. Instead, we just skimmed the occasional sign – including one about the unfortunately-named former Arkansas state senator, Festus Orestes Butt.
Throughout the day, they also give tours of the State Treasurer’s Office, which is a small room on the second floor. We figured we might as well join that, and I’m so glad we did because it was probably the most unique experience we’ve ever had in a capitol building.
After a very thorough discussion of the ceiling (our tour guide was a former construction worker and very passionate about the ceiling design) and a little bit of history of the Treasury, we were invited to enter the vault.
We walked through a thick steel door that was so heavy that the wagon transporting it during construction of the building sank into the mud and got stuck. Once through the door, our tour guide talked a little more about the state and the treasury, and then proceeded to open one of the safes and pull out stacks of cash.
“Who wants to hold it?” he asked.
We thought he was joking.
He was not.
So we each took a turn getting our picture taken while holding $600,000 in cash.
That’s the first – and presumably only – time I will ever have that much money in my hands at once.
By the end of our capitol tour, it was nearing lunch time, so we headed to Riverfront Park for some lunch and a bit of exploration. The weather was finally warming up, but it was still somewhat chilly, so we had a car picnic before bundling up and heading out for a walk across the Arkansas River on the Junction Bridge.
The Arkansas River actually originates in the Colorado Rockies; a few years back, we spent a (very cold) day rafting it. What a difference from the canyons and rapids of Colorado to the wide, smooth waterway seen here.
We had just under an hour before we had to be to the airport so, despite the visitor center and museum being closed on Mondays, we decided it was still worth making a quick trip to Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site.
In September 1957, a full three years after federal segregation laws had been struck down, nine Black students were set to attend the formerly all-white Little Rock Central High School for the first time. Lawsuits had been ongoing for the past three years, preventing prior enrollment of Black students; this had been a lengthy battle.
In defiance of the failed lawsuits and federal laws, the governor of Arkansas sent National Guard troops to block the arrival of these students. Ultimately, he was ordered by the courts to stand down, and President Eisenhower sent in federal troops to escort the students and ensure their safe arrival.
These students became known as the Little Rock Nine.
This is a greatly oversimplified recounting of the situation, but all we were able to learn without being able to enter the visitor center and museum. I was disappointed, because this was such a pivotal event in our nation’s history, and one I know very little about.
Today, the school not only still stands, but remains an active high school. It’s the only active school located within the boundary of a national historic site in the US.
And then it was time to head to the airport, return our rental car, and catch our flight back home.
“I feel like this trip has given me a very incorrect impression of Arkansas weather,” my husband mused as we said goodbye to the snow and ice and headed back to the unseasonably warm and snow-free Colorado.
He wasn’t wrong.
It had been a whirlwind weekend, and thanks to the weather we’d had to settle for seeing only about two-thirds of what was on our itinerary. But Hot Springs National Park and the high point were the two main objectives, and we’d achieved both of those, so in the end, I suppose it all worked out.
Up next: A snowy visit to Hot Springs National Park
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