1,000 Places to See in the U.S.A. & Canada Before You Die (50 page)

Delta blues, characterized by a spare style and passionate vocals, might have remained in the fields and juke joints were it not for
King Biscuit Time,
a radio show broadcast out of Helena since 1941. Sponsored by King Biscuit flour, it originally featured local talent—guitarist Robert Junior Lockwood, harmonica player Sonny Boy Williamson, and host Sonny “Sunshine” Payne—and was such a huge success that it made Helena a center for the blues.
King Biscuit Time
is still a weekly show produced out of the Delta Cultural Center, a museum that preserves the cultural heritage of the Arkansas Delta, a 27-county region covering the eastern third of the state.

In 1986, the King Biscuit Blues Festival began as a one-day event, and over the years it’s become one of the best-known blues festivals in the country. But some East Coast folks trade marked the King Biscuit name somewhere along the line and in 2005 the local Sonny Boy Blues Society, which runs the event, was forced to change the name that the festival had made famous. With petitions to save the name ongoing, today’s Delta blues legends James Cotton and Bobby Rush continue showing up for the three-day festival, featuring 60 artists.

Nearly 100,000 blues enthusiasts attend the Arkansas Blues & Heritage Festival every year.

And the flavor is unchanged. Music runs on several stages down by the levee and spills
out into the streets of downtown, where blues men unfold a chair, open up their guitar cases, and play their hearts out. You couldn’t ask for a nicer setting: Helena sits on an unusually pretty site at the tip of Crowley’s Ridge, a long, low hill formed when the Mississippi shifted course millions of years ago.

Here’s the rub: finding a place to lay your head (the whole town has only 350 hotel rooms). The best B&B in town is the Edwardian Inn, a 1904 Colonial Revival home with quarter-sawn oak floors, staircases, and ceilings. Music lovers from England, the Netherlands, and Germany pay their deposits well over a year in advance (though you can try the waiting list). Most folks are willing to travel from towns just over the border in Mississippi like Clarksdale (see p. 435), Batesville, Tunica—or even east from Little Rock, over 2 hours away. It’s worth the drive, and when you get to Helena, all you have to pay for is the beer and barbecue.

W
HERE
: 120 miles east of Little Rock. Tel 870-338-8798;
www.bluesandheritage.com
.
When:
3 days in early Oct.
D
ELTA
C
ULTURAL
C
ENTER
: Tel 800-358-0972 or 870-338-4350;
www.deltaculturalcenter.com
.
When:
closed Mon.
E
DWARDIAN
I
NN
: Tel 800-598-4749 or 870-338-9155;
www.edwardianinn.com
.
Cost:
$160 during festival; from $80 otherwise.

America’s First Spa

Arkansas

The word “spa” comes from the Latin phrase
sanus per aquam
, or “health through water.” And with its dozens of hot springs, healing thermal waters protected within an urban national park, this is America’s very first spa
in the purest sense. A destination for the wealthy and others in search of cures since the 19th century, Hot Springs was considered such a precious resource that it was named a federal reservation in 1832. It still has the grandest collection of bathhouses in America—eight European-style spas called Bathhouse Row, built in the early 20th century with such grand amenities as stained-glass windows and billiards rooms. With magnificent magnolias in front of the bath-houses and a sweeping, bricklined Grand Promenade behind, the elegant spas evoke a leisurely time when people flocked here to take a 3-week 21-bath cure.

An imposing neoclassical structure with massive columns and blue-and-white-striped awnings, the Buckstaff Bathhouse has been in continuous operation since 1912 and still offers the elaborate bathing ritual of bygone days. It begins with a 20-minute whirlpool bath and proceeds through various mysterious-sounding but delicious-feeling treatments including hot packs, sitz baths, steam cabinets, and needle showers, best enjoyed when followed by a Swedish massage.

Therapeutic baths fell out of favor in the U.S. in the 1960s, and most of the bathhouses stand empty in various stages of preservation. The grandest one of all, Fordyce Bathhouse, has been reincarnated as a visitors center for Hot Springs National Park, which boasts 26 miles of hiking trails that lead up Hot Springs Mountain. From here the town’s 47 hot springs emanate at the mighty warm temperature of 147°F before being regulated for public use. Hike through dense oak forest to the Hot Springs Mountain Tower and a panoramic
view of both the heavily wooded city and the nearby Ouachita Mountains.

Buckstaff Baths is the only bathhouse on Bathhouse Row operating in its original capacity, with private soaking tubs and separate floors for men and women.

Artists began flocking to Hot Springs in the 1990s, making it a hot spot for galleries as well as arts festivals. The subject of the documentary
The Sound of Dreams,
the Hot Springs Music Festival celebrates classical music through symphony and song as 125 apprentices are mentored by 30 masters. The Documentary Film Festival is the year’s other highlight, proving so successful that a year-round institute now enjoys a permanent home in the ultra-cool 1950s-era Malco Theater.

Plan to arrive or depart by means of the Arkansas Scenic 7 Byway (you can pick it up 30 miles from here), 160 miles up over hills and down into valleys, offering a mesmerizing show of great natural beauty.

W
HERE
: 50 miles southwest of Little Rock.
Park info:
Tel 501-624-2701;
www.nps.gov/hosp
.
Hot Springs visitors info:
Tel 800-772-2489 or 501-321-2027;
www.hotsprings.org
.
B
UCKSTAFF
B
ATH
H
OUSE
: Tel 501-623-2308;
www.buckstaffbaths.com
.
Cost:
$47 for Traditional Bathing Package with massage.
When:
closed Sat–Sun, Dec–Feb.
A
RKANSAS
B
YWAY
:
www.byways.org
.
B
EST TIMES
: early June for Music Festival; 3rd week of Oct for Documentary Film Festival.

The Hottest Thing Going

Hot Springs, Arkansas

Barbecue brings out fiery passions in otherwise cool-headed people, and nowhere is this more evident than in Arkansas. While grown men resort to fisticuffs when discussing who serves the best barbecue in the
country, President Bill Clinton, weatherman Willard Scott, and the band Aerosmith have all weighed in on the side of McClard’s Bar-BQ, whose crusty-on-the-outside, pink-on-the-inside ribs have been wowing customers since 1928. (When Clinton was in office and passing through, McClard’s would run a special order out to
Air Force One.
) Located within Hot Springs National Park (see previous page), McClard’s Bar-B-Q got its start when motel owners Alex and Gladys McClard had a customer who couldn’t pay his $10 bill. He offered his secret recipe for the world’s greatest barbecue sauce in lieu of cash, and a deal was struck.

In 1942 McClard’s moved into a whitewashed stucco building with neon signs, and it’s been the scene of mealtime pandemonium ever since as barbecue lovers line up at two different entryways. The blowout dish to order
here is Ribs and Fry, a hefty slab of ribs requiring only a gentle pull to separate the sweet meat from the bone, completely buried under a mountain of hand-cut perfectly golden french fries. The secret here is an old-fashioned hickory pit—no gas starters and nothing electric.

McClard’s Bar-B-Q serves more than 7,000 pounds of meat, 3,000 pounds of fries, and 250 gallons of beans each week.

The spotlight may be on the ribs, but no one passes on a side of McClard’s barbecued beans, which capture the authentic Ozarks spirit with their hot, sweet, tangy flavor.

Another place to go in search of Arkansas barbecue is Craig’s, an unrepentantly dumpy shack in DeValls Bluff (population 783), where the smoky ribs and piles of chopped pork are brushed with a thick spicy sauce made with Laurence Craig’s own secret ingredient—a healthy dose of meat drippings from the pork hams that are cooked on the pit he built in the 1940s. Mr. Craig has since passed, but the new owner still closely follows his time-honored traditions. Here the standout side dish is coleslaw snapping with crispness and spiked with apple and green pepper.

W
HERE
: 505 Albert Pike. Tel 501-624-9586;
www.mcclards.com
.
Cost:
Ribs and Fry, $10.
CRAIG’S
: DeValls Bluff. Tel 870-998-2616.
Cost:
rib dinner $8.

The World’s Largest Brown Trout

Lakeview, Arkansas

You don’t have to be an expert angler to bag your limit in the cold, clear waters of the White River, renowned for the best trout fishing in America. All up and down the lush, green river, rainbow trout
practically jump into your boat, courtesy of a federal policy that stocks it with a million and a half farm-raised rainbows every year. But the wily brown trout is a creature of a different stripe. Raised in the river and wise to the ways of fisherfolk, it is the trophy that expert anglers seek. Get out on the river early, when the heavy fog turns orange with the sunrise, and you might snag a 5- or 6-pound brown trout—you might even give the 40-pound, 4-ounce record some competition. The trout grow to gargantuan sizes here because conditions are ideal—a constant water temperature near 50 degrees year-round and an ample food source.

Wild cutthroat and brook trout are also found in these waters, though they’re elusive. The White River is one of the rare places where it’s possible to bag the Grand Slam of trout: brown, rainbow, cutthroat, and brook. It was not always like this. The White River used to be a warm-water river with bream, catfish, and smallmouth bass, but the building of Bull Shoals Dam in 1951 made the water too cold for the native fish. To make up for it, the federal government agreed to stock trout.

The dam is also what makes conditions so challenging for anglers in search of the brown trout. The waters rise and drop dramatically and unpredictably in a single day, depending on how many of the dam’s generators are open, and finding the best fishing in shifting conditions requires extensive knowledge of the area. You’re better off using professional guides, no matter what your angling expertise.

Some of the best guides can be found at Gaston’s White River Resort, 78 cottages perched on 2 miles of riverfront with a landing strip for private planes. Decorated with wood paneling and colonial furniture, the cottages offer fireplaces and redwood decks. The restaurant has a “you catch ’em, we cook ’em” policy, but serves plenty of trout dishes for those who didn’t make it out onto the river. You can sign up for fly-fishing classes, too.