Arkansas Vacation – Days 1 & 2 (Thursday, April 1 and Friday, April 2)

Most Chicagoans think of going to places like Florida, Mexico, California, Arizona, etc. for Spring Break.

But we’re not most Chicagoans :)

As strange as it initially sounds, we decided to take a long weekend trip to Arkansas over Easter weekend for a few reasons.

1. Good Friday is a stock holiday, so Ben would only need to take one additional day off from work. We try to take advantage of the handful of weekends throughout the year that Ben has a Friday or Monday off. We wanted to go south to warmer temperatures, but also to a place we could drive to.

2. Ben was dying to go fishing and Arkansas’ White River is known for its superb trout fishing.

3. Ben’s brother Caleb lives in Houston with his wife Elizabeth and two kids, Sofia and Caleb. Arkansas is about halfway for each of us to drive, so we decided to meet them there! It worked out great and we got a REALLY good deal on the cabin (I asked them to give us a discount since it was still sort of off season).

Check it out here: The White River Cabin – a 3 bedroom, 2 bath home with satellite tv, wireless internet, pretty kitchen, nice bathrooms, etc. that is right on the river. It was perfect for our two families.

Days 1 &2 -

Driving from Chicago to Arkansas is supposed to take about 11 hours, so we decided to leave Thursday afternoon and drive to St. Louis, which should be about 5.5 hours. I left my house with the kids and an extremely packed car around 3:15 p.m., picked up Ben from his office downtown, then proceeded to sit in traffic for the next couple of hours. I was driving in awful traffic for about three hours total. That’s a long time.

One of the happier moments in the car (after we were out of traffic, but before it got late and the kids became crabby) was when we were listening to the Dora party CD and Charlie was dancing and laughing (I was driving so Ben took this video, and I think he was dancing too at the beginning, hence the shaky camera work)….

Charlie Dancing to Dora on the way to Arkansas from Sarah on Vimeo.

I had used Priceline to get a hotel for the night, and scored a room for $38 at a Holiday Inn just south of St. Louis. I love Priceline. We rolled into the parking lot at 10 p.m. That last hour was pretty miserable because our boys of course hadn’t fallen asleep but it was way past their usual bedtime. Charlie cried a LOT. Thankfully we managed to sleep well in one room, with Charlie in the pack and play and Eli in his peapod tent.

The next morning, we picked up some hot Krispy Kreme donuts (we don’t have any close to where we live so I was all excited, but afterward we decided Krispy Kremes are way too sweet!) and headed south to Arkansas. We arrived in Mountain View, Arkansas at 2 p.m. after driving for six hours. On the way, Ben kept asking if I thought the directions were right because we were taking so many small country roads to get there – and we were winding through the mountains and up and down hills… poor Eli got motion sickness and kept asking me to give him a hug, so I climbed over to the back and gave him one. He was gripping his poor tummy and so sad. But he didn’t throw up, thank goodness. My sweet Illinois boy isn’t used to hills and mountains since everything around here is FLAT.

We stopped to pick up groceries in the one major store of the town – Wal-Mart of course! It was much nicer than the ones near our house. Then we drove the 20 minutes off of the main road to get down to our cabin. Caleb and Elizabeth and kids had left at 4 a.m. that morning and got there around 2 p.m., so they made really good time (I think it was supposed to be 9 1/2 hrs for them). Sofia was in her cute princess nightgown since they left so early.

We saw Caleb and Elizabeth back in December when Ben’s family all got together for Christmas, so it hadn’t been too long since we saw them last. But it took Eli a little while to get acclimated again. He can be kind of a stinker sometimes. But the bubble machine was a good way to break the ice :)

We bought this raft right before the trip, and Ben was excited to pump it up and try it out. The kids had fun climbing all over the boat.

Eli & Sofia -

Caleb & Charlie -

Another fun activity was throwing rocks in the river, which was right by the cabin. One scary moment was that Charlie tumbled forward (doing a somersault) down the hill and got a little muddy and wet. He is such a fast little guy and it’s hard to always keep him out of trouble! I scooped him up to run back up to the house and clean him up, but he flipped out because he wanted to keep playing near the water. Funny boy.

Another silly Charlie moment was when he was sitting at the table eating a snack, and he discovered his nostrils. Charlie kept sticking his finger up one nostril, then putting it in the other, and back and forth, despite the fact that I kept trying to stop him.

Eli brought some of his favorite stuffed animals to sleep with him, and Sofia really loved his zebra, which she called a giraffe :) Eli was having a very hard time sharing…

But they still had some happy moments together : ) I love Sofia’s long hair!! She is such a pretty girl.