Tonight we were joined by our great friends and Alliance RV owners Rachel and Mike Ellis (pictured above)! We went out for Mexican and had a great conversation with them. We will party with them again in just a couple weeks in Elkhart IN at the Alliance National Rally!
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Busy last day at Little Rock AR. We started out driving to the Old Mill in North Little Rock, which is an authentic reproduction of an old water-powered grist mill. This very mill appears in the opening scene of the classic 1939 film Gone with the Wind and is believed to be the only building remaining from the film. Built in 1933; designed to look old so it would appear as if it was built the 1800s. The park is decorated with sculptures of toadstools, tree stumps, and a tree branch-entwined bridge that connects the mill to the rest of the park. Doreen and I would classify this as a "nugget" - a really cool site that was totally not on our radar.
Built in 1933 as a tourist attraction
The beautiful Old Mill
A bridge made of concrete and iron but made to look like wood and stone
Workers were recreating the mill where the grain would go
Another concrete and iron bridge made to look as if it were built from wood
From the Old Mill we headed south to the ESSE Purse Museum! Yes, you read correctly! The ESSE Purse Museum is one of only two purse museums in the world, and is the culmination of owner Anita Davis’ dream of exploring concepts of art, history, and the feminine. The name ESSE comes from the Latin infinitive for “to be,” which embodies what visitors will find in the museum: that a purse is not just a utilitarian bag in which a woman carries her necessities, but an extension of her personal space, her essence, and of the things that make her “her.”
The entrance to the museum and store.
Used to be an auto repair shop complete with overhead door.
Inside the store
Our tour guide explaining the museum
Yep that is a frog pelt coin purse!
There were purses and other items from each decade. The displays were very well done !
We exited through the store but did not buy anything. Next door was the Root cafe. We highlighted this cafe while researching our trip because it was featured on the TV show "Diner's, Drive-in's and Dives" with the show's host Guy Fieri.
The Root Cafe's claim to fame is that they are a farm-to-table cafe focusing on local and sustainable food. According to our hostess, everything they serve is sourced locally. One of their specialties featured on the TV show 28 Nov 2018 was their homemade bratwurst, so it seemed only appropriate that we should get a couple brats to go for lunch. The lemonade's we ordered were hand squeezed!
A little more history of Ed: From the Root Cafe we headed south of Little Rock to a place way out in the country that means nothing to Doreen and would likely mean nothing to many of you, but I had to go check it out. It is the remnants of the A.M. radio station KAAY. This station was born out of KTHS, the state's first 50,000-watt AM broadcast station. KTHS (which stood for “Kum To Hot Springs”) officially came on the air in 1924 and was granted its new increased-power operating privileges in 1953 when it moved from Hot Springs to Little Rock.
My interest in radio started when I was a small child and I would make a career of radio-electronics repair in the Air Force. But back in my youth, at some point I got my first tabletop radio receiver, a Zenith if I recall correctly, and I strung a longwire antenna out my bedroom window to the nearby tree. At night, the clear channel A.M. radio stations rolled in. Two of my favorite stations I remember listening to were WLS in Chicago Illinois and KAAY in Little Rock Arkansas. KAAY featured a program called Beaker Street which played a selection of hard rock, blues and jazz. Interestingly enough, because KAAY’s signal pattern also covered Cuba, the station lent its services to the U.S. government to broadcast “Voice of America” programming to the Cuban people during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. I remember when I was at Air Force technical training school at Keesler Air Force Base Biloxi Mississippi in 1973 many a Friday or Saturday night my roommate Jimmy and I would enjoy some cold beers and some great tunes! Memories!
According to their web site, the last day KAAY broadcast Top 40 music was April 3, 1985. One of their former DJs was given the honor of doing a one-hour Beaker Street on the last hour of the last day. The studio and tower still exist but the station itself has long since stopped broadcasting.
Well, looks like the first wave of weather has passed north of us but we are not in the clear. Our bug-out bags are packed and our hard-sided shelter is nearby if needed.
Tomorrow we pull chocks and head to Bull Shoals AR and the White River State Park to do some trout fishing!
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