Day 4 – The Pilgrimmage to Clintonville (Little Rock on Independence Day)
David, Mike, Adam, and Ian took a road trip to Little Rock, leaving at 7:05 am. More about that in a minute, but here’s what happened with Sandy, Dezi, and the little kids. There was a local parade for the Fourth of July, so the girls and little ones loaded up for the local celebration of Independence Day. Sandy said it was a small parade with more candy than she had ever seen before. The kids were at the end of the parade, so they received most of the leftovers. Anna got her hair all twisted up in a handheld fan.
The kids swam in the outside pool until rain showers came, forcing them to move to the indoor pool. It’s nice to have choices. Besides that, everyone ate a lot of candy and watched cartoons.
Now, to the highlight of the day: A trip to the Clinton Presidential Library and Museum (aka Clinton Library or Bubba’s Books, Bait, and Tackle) in Little Rock. For some strange reason (which no one in our traveling party can understand), I have had a desire to go visit the Clinton presidential library. Maybe it’s because I regretted not going to Reagan’s library last summer while we were in California. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent so much time in my life talking about Bill Clinton, I really just have a fixation on him. Ostensibly, the reason was “We’re too close not to go” (oddly, the same reason I had last week for driving three hours to Niagara Falls). So I convinced Mike, and we dragged along our two oldest boys in an effort to help the wives have a little less work while we were gone, as well as teaching them some history.
On the way down, we stopped in the Batesville McDonald’s for breakfast. Mike and I had McGriddles, and we agreed that the entire trip was worth it just for the opportunity to eat one of those. Thanks to Glenn Beck for inspiring me to first try one several years ago. They are the perfect breakfast food. I thought of Tracy Roach while I ate mine.
Two hours and twenty minutes after leaving, we rolled into Little Rock. Crossing the Arkansas River, we saw the CPC jutting out over the river. I had heard someone say it looks like a single-wide house trailer, and I can see the resemblance. But after looking at it longer, I now think it looks more like a semi trailer parked down by the river. Weaving through the streets leading there, we quickly found a parking lot already filled at 9:30, just 30 minutes after it opened. Admission was free in honor of July 4th, which might explain why the crowds were so large. Normal admission price is $7, a portion of which goes to benefit the Clinton Foundation. I’m itching to say something smart-alecky, but I’ll just say “no comment”. I’ll probably have to say that several times in this blog.
Mike immediately noticed the people leaving their cars were almost all Oriental or African-American. Clinton is immensely popular with both, as he was seen as pro-Chinese and pro-black. The first thing I noticed was that parked right in front of the CPC were several porta-potties. Here’s Mike and the boys posed in front of them.
Adam decided to use one just to make sure it would work. If you’re ever in Arkansas and need to rent one, here’s the contact information:
The reason for the porta-potties was that they were having a family picnic on the lawn in front of the CPC. There was croquet, large inflatable balls, food for sale, and lots of music playing. Someone was selling slices of watermelon from Hope, Arkansas (Bill Clinton’s birthplace). There were several families with kids there. Adam picked up a ball long enough to pose.
There wasn’t much of a line to get in, but we did have to go through security. Mike got busted for bringing in a water bottle, which they confiscated. Ian smuggled his in his shorts, but we confessed and they confiscated it, too. They had a huge tub full of soda bottles and cans. Mike speculates that they probably use them to stock the vending machines down in the cafeteria.
It was sort of overwhelming at first, but it turned out that there really wasn’t that much there to look at. The first floor had Clinton’s presidential limousine, which was retired when Bush took office. The second floor had a collection of all the Clinton campaign pins. Most of them were plain, but here are a few creative ones:
The highlight of Adam’s day was finding out that the Clintons had a cat named Socks. He was thrilled when we got a free picture of Socks the Cat later at the gift store.
There was also a large collection of pictures from the 1992 and 1996 campaigns. Here’s my favorite:
This picture was taken during happier days, back when the Clintons and Gores were still friends and Bill and Hillary actually lived in the same house (or bus).
There was a nice replica of the Oval Office during Clinton’s years, which I included in the video. (For video highlights of our trip, check out the site finchers.podomatic.com.) It was actually pretty cool to get a sense of the size, shape, and layout of the oval office. I even got a couple of ideas for outfitting my new office, but we’ll see if Corey says it’s too late to change it to an oval shape.
Adam wandered off and found a new exhibit in which cowboy heroes of the silver screen were featured. Apparently, President Clinton was a huge fan of Westerns Movies as a kid and there were lots of pictures of him dressed up as a junior cowboy. Here was his artwork from early in school:
The next section displayed tons of things that the Clintons were given as gifts during his presidency. (No sign of things that may or may not have been removed from the White House.) This was quite a collection of stuff, as Mike said, that you would never want to keep for yourself after someone gave it to you. There were tons of paintings people had done of Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea. Would you want those in your house? Neither would I, so they wound up on display behind glass for people to pay $7 to come see. I only took a picture of one such “gift horse,” a collection of porcelain eggs with different presidents painted on one side and their first ladies painted on the other side:
I’m not sure in the case of Bill and Hillary which was intended to be which.
Finally, the last exhibit we saw was a recreation of the President’s Cabinet Room. It’s a huge table with built in video touch screens (although I’m not sure if the original one has that or not). Adam is sitting here in the Vice-President’s chair.
We wrapped up our time in Little Rock with a quick visit to the gift store, part of which is described in the video. I added to my magnet collection and bought a presidential mouse pad. Other than that, everything looked too expensive to me. Mike couldn't find any Monica Lewinsky bobble-head dolls, so we gave up and left.
After a quick stop at Arby’s for lunch, we went to Harding University at Searcy, Arkansas on the way home. It is a church of Christ college, and has a very impressive campus. One of our 2006 graduates, Brock Gandy, is transferring there and the good news was that they accepted every one of his credits from Central and transferred his associate’s degree in to make him a Central. We’ve been looking for colleges like this to work with, so I want to explore future possibilities with them. We drove around the HUGE campus until we found the Bible and Missions building, a very impressive three story brick building. The highlight for Mike was the mural of the globe made in tile on the floor. Here he is standing on (you guessed it) Taiwan.
Driving home, we stopped in Cave City to buy a good Arkansas watermelon and stop at Dollar General. We made it back to the condo in time to miss the rain that had come through, leaving things cooled down and a little wet. The kids went down to the beach to try catching fish with the butterfly nets we had bought them at DG. It was fairly frustrating, but there was some success. One kid (not one of ours) used our net and caught a turtle. That was pretty exciting.
Dezi made steak for supper and then we watched The Princess Bride, a classic eighties movie. We finished just in time to go see the town’s fairly impressive display of fireworks. It was every bit as long as the one in Moberly. It finished about 9:45, after which we got everyone home and to bed.
And amazingly enough, I spent the entire 4th of July without connecting to the Internet one time! Now that is a vacation!
[Signing out for now to check my 50 e-mails.]
The kids swam in the outside pool until rain showers came, forcing them to move to the indoor pool. It’s nice to have choices. Besides that, everyone ate a lot of candy and watched cartoons.
Now, to the highlight of the day: A trip to the Clinton Presidential Library and Museum (aka Clinton Library or Bubba’s Books, Bait, and Tackle) in Little Rock. For some strange reason (which no one in our traveling party can understand), I have had a desire to go visit the Clinton presidential library. Maybe it’s because I regretted not going to Reagan’s library last summer while we were in California. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent so much time in my life talking about Bill Clinton, I really just have a fixation on him. Ostensibly, the reason was “We’re too close not to go” (oddly, the same reason I had last week for driving three hours to Niagara Falls). So I convinced Mike, and we dragged along our two oldest boys in an effort to help the wives have a little less work while we were gone, as well as teaching them some history.
On the way down, we stopped in the Batesville McDonald’s for breakfast. Mike and I had McGriddles, and we agreed that the entire trip was worth it just for the opportunity to eat one of those. Thanks to Glenn Beck for inspiring me to first try one several years ago. They are the perfect breakfast food. I thought of Tracy Roach while I ate mine.
Two hours and twenty minutes after leaving, we rolled into Little Rock. Crossing the Arkansas River, we saw the CPC jutting out over the river. I had heard someone say it looks like a single-wide house trailer, and I can see the resemblance. But after looking at it longer, I now think it looks more like a semi trailer parked down by the river. Weaving through the streets leading there, we quickly found a parking lot already filled at 9:30, just 30 minutes after it opened. Admission was free in honor of July 4th, which might explain why the crowds were so large. Normal admission price is $7, a portion of which goes to benefit the Clinton Foundation. I’m itching to say something smart-alecky, but I’ll just say “no comment”. I’ll probably have to say that several times in this blog.
Mike immediately noticed the people leaving their cars were almost all Oriental or African-American. Clinton is immensely popular with both, as he was seen as pro-Chinese and pro-black. The first thing I noticed was that parked right in front of the CPC were several porta-potties. Here’s Mike and the boys posed in front of them.
Adam decided to use one just to make sure it would work. If you’re ever in Arkansas and need to rent one, here’s the contact information:
The reason for the porta-potties was that they were having a family picnic on the lawn in front of the CPC. There was croquet, large inflatable balls, food for sale, and lots of music playing. Someone was selling slices of watermelon from Hope, Arkansas (Bill Clinton’s birthplace). There were several families with kids there. Adam picked up a ball long enough to pose.
There wasn’t much of a line to get in, but we did have to go through security. Mike got busted for bringing in a water bottle, which they confiscated. Ian smuggled his in his shorts, but we confessed and they confiscated it, too. They had a huge tub full of soda bottles and cans. Mike speculates that they probably use them to stock the vending machines down in the cafeteria.
It was sort of overwhelming at first, but it turned out that there really wasn’t that much there to look at. The first floor had Clinton’s presidential limousine, which was retired when Bush took office. The second floor had a collection of all the Clinton campaign pins. Most of them were plain, but here are a few creative ones:
The highlight of Adam’s day was finding out that the Clintons had a cat named Socks. He was thrilled when we got a free picture of Socks the Cat later at the gift store.
There was also a large collection of pictures from the 1992 and 1996 campaigns. Here’s my favorite:
This picture was taken during happier days, back when the Clintons and Gores were still friends and Bill and Hillary actually lived in the same house (or bus).
There was a nice replica of the Oval Office during Clinton’s years, which I included in the video. (For video highlights of our trip, check out the site finchers.podomatic.com.) It was actually pretty cool to get a sense of the size, shape, and layout of the oval office. I even got a couple of ideas for outfitting my new office, but we’ll see if Corey says it’s too late to change it to an oval shape.
Adam wandered off and found a new exhibit in which cowboy heroes of the silver screen were featured. Apparently, President Clinton was a huge fan of Westerns Movies as a kid and there were lots of pictures of him dressed up as a junior cowboy. Here was his artwork from early in school:
The next section displayed tons of things that the Clintons were given as gifts during his presidency. (No sign of things that may or may not have been removed from the White House.) This was quite a collection of stuff, as Mike said, that you would never want to keep for yourself after someone gave it to you. There were tons of paintings people had done of Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea. Would you want those in your house? Neither would I, so they wound up on display behind glass for people to pay $7 to come see. I only took a picture of one such “gift horse,” a collection of porcelain eggs with different presidents painted on one side and their first ladies painted on the other side:
I’m not sure in the case of Bill and Hillary which was intended to be which.
Finally, the last exhibit we saw was a recreation of the President’s Cabinet Room. It’s a huge table with built in video touch screens (although I’m not sure if the original one has that or not). Adam is sitting here in the Vice-President’s chair.
We wrapped up our time in Little Rock with a quick visit to the gift store, part of which is described in the video. I added to my magnet collection and bought a presidential mouse pad. Other than that, everything looked too expensive to me. Mike couldn't find any Monica Lewinsky bobble-head dolls, so we gave up and left.
After a quick stop at Arby’s for lunch, we went to Harding University at Searcy, Arkansas on the way home. It is a church of Christ college, and has a very impressive campus. One of our 2006 graduates, Brock Gandy, is transferring there and the good news was that they accepted every one of his credits from Central and transferred his associate’s degree in to make him a Central. We’ve been looking for colleges like this to work with, so I want to explore future possibilities with them. We drove around the HUGE campus until we found the Bible and Missions building, a very impressive three story brick building. The highlight for Mike was the mural of the globe made in tile on the floor. Here he is standing on (you guessed it) Taiwan.
Driving home, we stopped in Cave City to buy a good Arkansas watermelon and stop at Dollar General. We made it back to the condo in time to miss the rain that had come through, leaving things cooled down and a little wet. The kids went down to the beach to try catching fish with the butterfly nets we had bought them at DG. It was fairly frustrating, but there was some success. One kid (not one of ours) used our net and caught a turtle. That was pretty exciting.
Dezi made steak for supper and then we watched The Princess Bride, a classic eighties movie. We finished just in time to go see the town’s fairly impressive display of fireworks. It was every bit as long as the one in Moberly. It finished about 9:45, after which we got everyone home and to bed.
And amazingly enough, I spent the entire 4th of July without connecting to the Internet one time! Now that is a vacation!
[Signing out for now to check my 50 e-mails.]
posted by Central Christian College of the Bible at
8:47 AM
