A Weekend in Central Arkansas

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Last Updated on February 22, 2024 by Grant

When you live in Georgia and you love the American West, you end up traveling across the country a lot. Our route west usually goes one of two ways: a southern route through Arkansas, Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle or a more northern route across Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska.

We’ve done both routes a few times. We REALLY hate driving through St. Louis… The traffic is just horrible. On top of that, Kansas and Nebraska just aren’t that exciting. Then we found a Hampton Inn in Clarksville, Arkansas right off I-40 that was a steal at 5,000 Hilton Honors points. After a couple of stays, the reward redemption rate went up to 10,000 points, but it is still fantastic.

Thus, the trek across Arkansas became more common for us. I can’t even count how many times we’ve driven west across I-40. Since we build most of our road trip itineraries around visiting National Park Sites, we try to stop at a couple along the route west.

Headed west on I-40 means heading into the late day sun.
We often drive I-40 going west to take advantage of a great hotel value along the way.

When the time came to plan our 2017 road trip through the American West, the time was right for us to visit our last few Arkansas park units.

We stayed in Hot Springs, a good-sized, centrally located city. On our central Arkansas itinerary: Hot Springs National Park, Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site and President William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace Home National Historic Site.

Somewhat at the last-minute, my mom and sister decided to meet us in Hot Springs. We really enjoyed visiting with them and taking them with us to our last few stops in Arkansas.

(Disclaimer: When we link to places where you can buy our stuff or places we stayed, we are using special codes that earn us commissions on the sales at no additional cost to you. Please see our Review Policy  for more information.)

Hot Springs National Park

No visit to Hot Springs, Arkansas would be complete without a visit to Hot Springs National Park. The town got its name from the thermal springs, after all. And the town and the national park intertwine, to the point that it is sometimes difficult to tell when you’re in the park and when you’re just in town.

Bathhouse Row at Hot Springs NP, Arkansas
Hot Springs National Park’s main attraction are the bathhouses along the main street of the town of Hot Springs. Indeed, one side of the main street in Hot Springs belongs to the park, the other is privately owned.

The highlight of Hot Springs National Park is the thermal water. Bathhouse Row, the main attraction of the park, preserves nine historic bathhouse buildings. Two bathhouses are active today, providing a soak in the mineral water or other spa treatments such as a massage or a manicure.

Additional buildings house the visitor center, a retail shop and an art center. One building is even a brewery. Yep, one of the unique finds at Hot Springs National Park is Superior Bathhouse Brewing, the only brewery within a national park. Despite being mostly an urban park, there are a few hiking trails at Hot Springs.

You can read a more in-depth review of our experience at Hot Springs National Park here.

Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site

If we weren’t National Parks enthusiasts, we probably would have skipped this site. Not because it isn’t interesting or worthwhile, but because we’re teachers and this is a school. Not just a historic school, but an active school. Typically, visiting a school when you’re a teacher on summer vacation just isn’t high on the list!

But, we went because we are trying to visit every site within the National Park Service and we know it is significant. Our visit was interesting, even if it was a tour of a school.

Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas
This school was the site of serious racial tension in 1957 when nine black students enrolled in an all-white school.

We started at the Visitor Center,  located diagonally across the street from the school. The high school was at the center of the desegregation efforts after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. Unfortunately, the decision called for desegregation with “all deliberate speed,” a vague statement that allowed local entities to drag their feet.

The focus of the Little Rock Central HS NHS is on the “Little Rock Nine,” nine black students who fought to attend the formerly all-white school. The exhibits and park film highlight not just these nine students and their fight, but other significant “fights” throughout history.

The film weaves the story of the “Little Rock Nine” along with more current stories, such as the fight of Native Americans against poverty, inner-city youth and better education and fights against environmental pollutants in New Mexico. It was very interesting to see the mix of old and new and the motivating message to fight for what you think is right.

Guided Tour

While the exhibits and park film were great, the presentation within the guided tour was even better. The ranger provided more information on the history of the school, the students, the community at the time and all the events that surrounded these nine students in search of quality education.

The ranger encouraged participants to ask questions to make sure we understood the events and the significance of everything that happened. Once finished with the presentation, we walked over to the school. As it is a still-functioning school, you can only enter with a guided tour, even in the summer.

Inside Little Rock Central HS, Arkansas
Central High School is still a functioning high school but embraces its past with projects designed to prevent the past from being forgotten.

The outside of the building is beautiful. Seriously, one of the prettiest school buildings I have ever seen. The city built the school in 1927 and is still in good shape! The inside is pretty much exactly what you would expect from a school.

We walked through the halls to the auditorium and cafeteria. While everything was in pretty good condition, it was much more evident on the inside that the school is 90 years old!

The guided tour ended in the Commemorative Garden, a small park between the visitor center and high school.

Little Rock Central HS NHS is a worthwhile stop, even if you can’t get a guided tour of the school. Honestly, the exhibits, film and information provided by the rangers are the highlights. The school is just that, a school. There’s nothing special about the tour inside, though it was interesting to see a building so different from the one we teach in, which dates back only to the mid-1990s!

 Located in Little Rock, Arkansas, Little Rock Central HS NHS is about one hour from Hot Springs. Our visit lasted about 1.5 hours.

President William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace Home National Historic Site

I am not sure why or when birthplaces became a “thing” within the National Park Service. But, they are. There are many president’s birthplaces that are now National Historic Sites… George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Herbert Hoover and more.

We are in the age of folks being born in hospitals, which don’t make good National Historic Sites, thus, the “Clinton Birthplace Home.” This house is where President Bill Clinton spent the first four years of his life. The home was actually owned by Clinton’s grandparents. His grandparents cared for him for several years while his mother earned a degree and worked in New Orleans.

President Clinton Birthplace Home in Hope, Arkansas
The Bill Clinton Birthplace Foundation restored the kitchen of the birthplace home in Hope, Arkansas to look just like when President Clinton lived here.

The home is nice, with a large living room, dining room, kitchen and butler’s pantry and three bedrooms upstairs. The park offers tour of the home roughly every 30 minutes, as needed.

The ranger who led our tour did a great job of explaining the early life of President Clinton and the furnishings in the house. The tour was not at all political!

Regardless of your feelings of Clinton personally or politically, he was a United States President and deserves the respect of that office. The site visit and home tour were informative, though brief.

 Located in Hope, Arkansas, President William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace Home NHS is about 1.5 hours south of Hot Springs. Our visit lasted about an hour.

Crater of Diamonds State Park

As you (should) know, our travels usually center on National Park Service sites. It’s not that we don’t like other points of interest, there’s just so much cool stuff out there, we feel using NPS sites allows us to focus our efforts a bit. But, we do visit other interesting sites from time to time, such as Disney World, Historic Banning Mills in Georgia or the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, WY.

Admittedly, though, I have to give my sister credit for suggesting we stop at Crater of Diamonds State Park. Crater of Diamonds is the world’s eighth-largest diamond-bearing volcanic crater. For just a $10 entrance fee, visitors can search for real diamonds.

Digging for Diamonds in Arkansas
Bonnie and her sister, Molly, digging for diamonds.

Since he had work to do, Grant decided to sit this one out and allow my sister and I some time to bond over our diamond search. After paying the admission fee, we headed downstairs to get some equipment. You can bring your own or rent theirs for a small fee. As all we had were some rubber boots, we definitely needed to rent some equipment!

We opted for the Basic Diamond Hunting Kit, which comes with a small shovel, a sifting screen set and a bucket. The rental fee is $12, plus a $45 deposit. The park will refund your deposit you when you return the equipment.

Hunting for Diamonds

We probably should have looked through the exhibits a bit more, or maybe watched the video, on exactly how to search for diamonds. But, my sister had done a bit of prior research and we read the quick signs and just dove right in!

What I’m saying is we had absolutely no idea what we were doing! On top of that, as soon as we got out to the search “field” it started to rain! We quickly grabbed a bucket of dirt, then headed over to the covered water troughs to sift through everything.

Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas
We didn’t find any diamonds but did find some precious stones.

Once under cover and out of the rain, we sifted and sorted. Basically, we just looked around to see what everyone else was doing and followed. It was cool to dump a bit pile of dirt/mud that looked like nothing interesting and sift it down to tiny pieces of various rocks and minerals.

Ultimately, we didn’t find anything of value, but we had fun. We probably could have been a bit more prepared by wearing different clothes (stuff you don’t mind getting dirty) and studying up on the best ways to search for diamonds.

And, though we didn’t find anything, other visitors found two diamonds found that day. Grant met a guy in the bathroom claiming to have found a four-carat diamond. Yes, you do get to keep anything that you find!

 Located in Murfreesboro, Arkansas, Crater of Diamonds SP is about 80 minutes southwest of Hot Springs. Our visit lasted a little over an hour, though you could easily spend a full day here.

Final Thoughts on Arkansas

While we find ourselves driving through Arkansas a lot, we really can’t get excited about it as a destination. We’ve enjoyed most of our stops, but they just aren’t places that we are eager to return to.

Family selfie in Arkansas
We enjoyed the sites we visited, but seeing family was the real highlight of our weekend in Arkansas!

Hot Springs is an interesting town and makes a good base for exploring other sites in central Arkansas. Hot Springs National Park is certainly unique and much different from other National Parks. For that reason, I would encourage a visit. One day is more than enough to experience Hot Springs NP.  You can easily spend additional time visiting other nearby sites.

I can see many of these sites being good weekend visits for folks who live nearby. I might be more willing to make another stop here if it was closer to home. As it is, we’ll probably just view Arkansas from the windows for a while.


Travel Resources
What do you use to find a flight?

We use Skyscanner to find deals on flights. Skyscanner has a great interface and compares tons of airlines for the best pricing and routing. That said, it does not always have every airline and some airlines will have better deals on their website. Still, Skyscanner is a great place to start.
Click here to search for a flight.

What do you use to find a hotel?

We typically stay at Hilton properties, so we use the Hilton website. You can find good Hilton Honors discounts or AAA discounts for a hotel there. We make great use of our free night certificates from our Hilton Honors American Express.
Click here to book a Hilton property.

If there are no Hilton properties available, we use TripAdvisor to read reviews and book the hotel. We find we can get the best price that way.
Click here to search for a hotel.

We recently partnered with Stay22 to add interactive maps to each of our destination posts. This will allow you to see a plethora of hotels and vacation rentals all in one responsive map of the area.

What if I need more space than I can get at a hotel?

We use Vrbo for the times when we have rented a cabin for a weekend getaway, like this cabin in Townsend, TN, or needed to rent a house for a large family vacation. We had a great experience with them in terms of refunding deposits when COVID hit and will continue to use them.
Click here to search for a vacation rental.

Who do you use for rental cars?

As a general rule, we book with Hertz for rental cars. We have had nothing but good experiences with them. Plus, we really like unlimited mileage and not worrying about crossing state lines. We have even rented from Hertz overseas in both Slovenia and Croatia.
Click here to book a rental car.

How about booking a cruise?

We have found some amazing prices for booking a cruise through Cruise Direct. We have saved a lot of money on our cruises compared to what we found elsewhere, making a last-minute Bahamas cruise even cheaper.
Click here to book a cruise.

What if I want to rent an RV?

We highly recommend Outdoorsy for RV rentals. We rented a camper van for a week to visit Rocky Mountain National Park for the elk rut and Custer State Park for the Buffalo Round-Up and had a blast. The program was easy to use and we really enjoyed the freedom of having a camper van for that trip.
Click here to rent an RV.

What do you use for booking tours?

We don’t often book tours. Typically, we like to do stuff on our own. That said, there are some experiences you can’t have any other way. So, when we do want to book a tour, we always check Viator first.
Click here to book a tour.

Do you use anything to get discounts on the road?

We make extensive use of both Good Sam and AAA on the road. Good Sam is normally regarded as a discount card for RVers at campgrounds and Camping World but anyone can use the 5 cents off a gallon at the pump at both Pilot and Flying J.
Click here to get a Good Sam membership.
We have had AAA as long as we have been married and it has more than paid for itself in discounts at hotels, aside from the peace of mind of having roadside assistance. Add in paper maps and the ability to get an international driver’s license and it is more than worth it for any traveler out there.
Click here to get a AAA membership.

Hot Springs is a great base for exploring Central Arkansas, including Hot Springs NP, Little Rock Central HS NHS and President Clinton Birthplace Home NHS.
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