ARKANSAS: A HIGH POINT, A MOUNTAIN LODGE, A DRIVE THROUGH PARIS, AND AN AFRICAN SAFARI

We ended our trip to Arkansas by visiting a series of very eclectic locations.

In addition to visiting the fifty states, my husband has a goal to summit the highest point in every state (except, perhaps, Alaska's). Prior to this trip, we had been to the highest points in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Florida, Alabama, Florida, West Virginia, New Hampshire, and South Dakota.

My husband has also been to the high points in Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and Washington.

We planned to check off the Arkansas high point before leaving the state.

We were in a rush to make it to the Mount Magazine State Park before dark. The trail to the highest point in Arkansas is at the top of this road constructed by the CCC in the 1930s. We needed to get to the trail while there was still light, but fog settling on the mountain was slowing us down.

Finally, near the top of the road, we broke through the fog, and shortly after that we entered the park.

ARKANSAS, LITTLE ROCK: CLINTON PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY

Love him or hate him, you have to be intrigued by Bill Clinton, In America, we love our rags to riches stories, and Bill's is a pretty good one.

Bill Clinton was born in Hope, Arkansas, a small town 112 miles from Little Rock. His father was killed in an accident three months before he was born, so Bill lived in this cute little frame house with his maternal grandparents for the first four years of his life while his mother studied nursing in New Orleans.

When his mother remarried, he moved to another house in Hope before eventually moving to Hot Springs, Arkansas, where he graduated from high school. Clinton went to college at Georgetown University on a scholarship--I'm guessing that was not something that happened often to Hot Springs High School graduates. Upon graduation he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, following which got his JD from Yale University. After graduation he married Hilary, and a few years later he returned to Arkansas, where he was elected governor in 1978 at age 32.

Impressive stuff for a little boy from Hope.

Clinton notes that when it came time to build his library, members of his graduating class at Georgetown offered him $30 million if he would build it in Washington, D.C.  He told them he couldn't do that. "I have to put it in Arkansas, and I have to put in in Little Rock, because I would never have become president without the people of Arkansas," he said.

The William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park is a complex that includes the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service, housed in what was once a train depot, followed by a newspaper office, and then--believe it or not--a Spaghetti Factory restaurant. Perfect for a president known for his love of carbs.

In contrast, the building next door, the Clinton Presidential Library, is a somewhat sterile modernist steel and glass building cantilevered over the Arkansas River. (There are those who criticize it for looking like "a trailer on stilts.")

ARKANSAS, LITTLE ROCK: THE STATE CAPITOL BUILDING AND INTEGRATION AT CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL

My husband Bob and I have a goal to visit all 50 states, and we are almost there. One of the states neither one of us had been to was Oklahoma, so on a whim we planned a trip for December 2014. We decided to throw in some places in Northern Texas and Western Arkansas to expand the trip.

We flew into the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, picked up a rental car, and headed for Little Rock, Arkansas, a distance of about 300 miles. After a good night's sleep, our first stop was the state capitol building (because we also have a goal to visit all 50 capitol buildings). It was all decked out in its seasonal finery: