Our friend went to college in northwest Arkansas and knows the area fairly well. We let her pick our lunch spot, and she picked Hugo’s in downtown Fayetteville. The restaurant is located down a flight of steps.
The inside is decorated with old photos, advertisements, and mirrors. A neon sign on one wall says “typewriters.” My hamburger was awesome. The fries were limp but tasted good. I’d definitely go back if I’m ever in Fayetteville again.
We went camping at Devil’s Den State Park, Thursday was forecasted to be rainy, so my wife, our niece, and our friends drove into Fayetteville in search of adventure.
Our first stop was the Clinton House Museum, on the grounds of the University of Arkansas. It was the only house Bill Clinton owned prior to the presidency, although he only lived there for a year and a half while teaching (August 1975-December 1976). He and Hillary were married in the front room.
Admission was $8, which was an enormous rip-off. The house is tiny, with only six rooms, one of which is a gift shop and one an office. Only in the kitchen has any attempt been made to restore the place to the way it looked when the Clintons owned it. The front room has a few displays, the now-enclosed back porch had a video screen playing Bill’s old campaign ads, but otherwise, there was nothing to see.
The house has one unique feature — it’s the only presidential home in America that you can visit and actually use the toilet that the President used when he lived there.
Of course I did.
The backyard has a garden planted with the favorite flowers of various first ladies.
The bay window in the front room. Bill and Hillary were married just inside.
The front room where the wedding took place.
The most famous toilet I’ve ever sat on.
The woman who greeted us was weird. She was loud and boisterous and very much infatuated with the Clintons. She behaved as though she was truly living the dream. All of that would have been strange enough, but she also kept wiping her nose and pulling up her pants while she talked at us.
Several of us went forth in search of the community of Bug Scuffle, Arkansas. There never was much of a town here — just a cluster of buildings around a stage stop on the Butterfield Trail. The name came, supposedly, from a time when people waiting for a stage witnessed a fight between two beetles on a pile of dung.
All that’s left is this church. The Internet says it still has a functioning congregation, but judging from the Christmas wreathes on the door and the dusty condition of the inside visible through the windows, I don’t think they meet very often.
Tuesday got off to a lazy start. Some of my fellow campers took off to find a cell signal. Others expressed a desire to sit and relax by the fire. I decided to walk the Devil’s Den Trail. I had it almost to myself.
The limestone cliffs along Lee Creek split away from the hillside, creating a series of crevices and small caves (all of which were closed on this visit due to a fungus that’s killing bats).
On the first morning of camping, I took a stroll from our site to the dam along Lee Creek. There wasn’t anybody around. The sun was just rising above the surrounding hills. It was a good start to a good week.
This chimney along Lee Creek is all that remains of the CCC mess hall. In the 1930s, men from the CCC built most of the park’s infrastructure — cabins, roads, bridges, trails, etc. Much of it remains in good condition. Ruins from the workers’ camp are visible in the woods near the chimney.
The dam was built by the CCC in 1937.
Looking south along Lee Creek from the top of the dam. The CCC chimney can be seen through the trees on the left. Our campsite was about half a mile around the bend.
Lee Creek and the Lee Creek Bridge. The chair sits on the remains of the original bridge built by the CCC. It was destroyed by a flood. It was right along here that I spotted my lifer Yellow-throated Warbler on my first visit to the park in April 1997.
