Day 40 - Little Rock, AR

Little Rock is a firebreak and we made it on time! Firebreaks are places we have to be on certain days to make sure we finish the trip all the way around, we don't want to get to the end of the 6 months only be a third of the way through the states! Its also an opportunity for us to catch up on any admin.

We stayed in the Comfort Inn and Suites Presidential which was a very comfortable hotel with a free shuttle around town, free wifi, free breakfast, a pool area and laundry facilities.

The hotel front desk gave us a top 10 tourist attractions in Little Rock leaflet so we decided to try to see some of them today. First was the number one attraction, The Clinton Presidential Center. It was about a 20 minute walk from the hotel in an industrial area (I expect this will become a trendy part of town in a few years time if Little Rock follows what other cities are doing!).

The Clinton Presidential Center is made up of a number of buildings including the Presidential Library and Museum. We paid $10 each to enter and it was actually really good. It contains documents from Clinton's time as President including his daily schedule, letters, speeches as well as gifts and memorabilia from his time in the White House. You could do one of the guided tours for free or what Lee and I did, was our own self guided tour at our own pace. Our favourite parts were the replicate White House Cabinet Room where I got to sit in the seat of the president and a replica of the Oval Office decorated the same way as when Bill Clinton was in office (it changes with each President).

Next to the Library and Museum was the Clinton Presidential Park Bridge. This used to be a railroad bridge called Rock Island Railroad Bridge; it closed when the rail road no longer used it and was due to be torn down but it was saved by the city and changed into a pedestrian pathway. As you'll see from our pictures, there are a few of these bridges across the city but this is the only one we decided to cross.

Before leaving the Presidential Center, we walked around the park we could see from the bridge. This was called the William E. “Bill” Clark Presidential Park Wetlands (I hope the locals have a shorter name as a bit of a mouth full!) and included walkways over the wetlands at the edge of the river with information stations on the plants and animals that live there. There was also the biggest bat box in Arkansas so the walk along the wetlands for free from horrible biting insects!

We then walked a short distance to the Rock Town Distillery, located in an old paint factory only to find out it had moved to the other side of town. We weren’t far from a Little Rock Historic Trolley stop so decided to grab a ride on that to get us to the new location. The Trolley was a real surprise. Unlike the other trolleys we had been on, this one had a fantastic driver who was full of interesting facts, advice and commentary during the drive. We decided not to get off the trolley but instead stayed on all the way around the loop, it was a tour of Little Rock and only cost $1 each! The trolley went over the river to North Little Rock. We didn’t have time to visit this city so was glad the Trolley could give us a ‘taste’ of what it was like.

We finally got off the trolley at River Market, another top 10 attraction. The market itself is a number of indoor privately owned food stalls. We were too late to try any of them but the food looked good and a neat idea to support local businesses.

River Market is right next to the riverfront which is well kept, felt safe and contains a number of points of interest to keep everyone entertained including a sculpture garden, water park, river walk, and a bridge you can climb up on.

We were hot, it was reaching 98F so we headed for a quick drink in the Flying Saucer, a German themed bar with hundreds of beers on tap before walking to the new location of the Rock Town Distillery.

We were really surprised when we entered the distillery as it wasn’t like other ones we have visited in the US or the UK. You walk into a bar and it’s a really nice bar. The bar serves all the drinks any normal bar would serve including spirits made by the distillery, beers, wines and cocktails. Lee had a peated beer which had been brewed locally in an old whiskey barrel from the distillery. I had a frozen Mint Julip which was just what I needed after all the walking in the heat.

The tour was small and personal, taking us around the barrel room, the distillery and the bottling room. There was a lot of care and attention going into the products and it was great to see experimenting for future products. Our guide was really knowledgeable and you could tell she wasn’t just employed to walk people around, she did the work on the ground too which really showed through when she was explaining the process or answering questions.

The tour ended with a tasting!! We tasted 11 products!! It included a vodka, a watermelon vodka, a gin, 3 whiskeys, a coffee liquor, a bourbon cream, an apple pie moonshine, a peach moonshine and a double proof apple pie moonshine which we ended up buying a bottle of. I love Fireball (cinnamon whiskey) and the double proof apple pie moonshine tasted like fireball but with more apple.

I liked the gin too although Lee was less keen (but he’s a beer drinker so his opinion doesn’t count!). It was a softer gin flavour with a slight strawberry taste, it would be lovely with some lemonade (Sprite).

Apparently they sell to the UK and across a number of states so watch out for them!

After all the tasting, I needed a sleep!! We headed back to the hotel for a power nap!

Our dinner recommendation came from Bradley the barman in the hotel. We went to the Flying Fish for dinner and had an Arkansas favourite, fried catfish! It was good and we were glad we found a local hangout rather than hitting a tourist or chain restaurant! Then we headed a little way down the road to finish the evening off with some dueling pianos.

We enjoyed Little Rock and found more to do than we expected, a cute little city to spend a couple of nights between destinations.