One goal of this trip was to complete our visits to each of the lower 48 states as OWGRV. Prior to this trip, we had visited 46 – all but Arkansas and Oklahoma, which we finally accomplished yesterday and today.
In order to at least clip a corner of Oklahoma, we headed towards Afton, which meant leaving the highway and going though pretty narrow and winding roads. We noticed that a number of folks living along these road never seemed to trade in or junk their surplus vehicles, but just left them in their yards.
We also discovered that Oklahoma couldn’t be bothered to put a single sign saying “Welcome to Oklahoma” – we only knew that we had crossed the state line when our GPS announced “welcome to Oklahoma”. We tried to find a business – or a post office – or something that mentioned Oklahoma to document our accomplishment, but since many of the businesses figured that they need not advertise that to their potential customers (assuming they new they were in Oklahoma), this was surprisingly difficult. We ended up with the following assortment of proof of our visit, that should satisfy even the staunchest skeptic.
For those who seek tangible proof, we fueled up at a fairly cheap station ($5.79/gallon) on our way out of Oklahoma. This receipt is destined to be displayed in the future OWRrv museum.
In honor of the accomplishment and because Tom recently discovered he can do it easily, post photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.
Consulting the ever-changing rules of OWGRVing, visiting a state or province has always meant simply driving on a highway or road in the state. Tom is lobbying for a write-in campaign for the next OWGRV convention to vote in tougher standards – like you have to sleep in each state. And you have to do it overnight – the fact that Scott often snoozes while Tom drives would not count. Could be a close vote…
Circling back to the beginning of today’s timeline, our high rating for Lake Dardanelle State Park took a slight hit after this morning’s bathhouse visit. The concept was great, and the facility was fairly new. We had seen this before – rather than a men’s and women’s side, each with showers, sinks, and toilet stalls/urinals, there were 4 unisex handicapped-accessible rooms each with a shower, sink, and toilet. In theory this works pretty well if there are more men than women and vice versa, and provides convenience and privacy.
However, here more than half of the rooms were locked, and since they were all ADA the huge shower stalls did not directly provide the main thing that Tom always asks for – a convenient place to put his shower bucket with soap, shampoo, and such. In addition, the sinks only had one temperature of water, and you had to keep pushing the button to keep in flowing (Tom’s was cold, he claims; Scott’s was hot.) And the showers had nozzles at two heights but not enough water flow. Interesting accommodations for the few campers we ever saw in wheelchairs (which is none).
Tonight’s campsite was Zan’s Creekside Campground in Joplin Missouri. On the way there we pretty much needed to go through Bentonville, Arkansas. And who could go through Bentonville, Arkansas without visiting the Walmart Museum downtown? We were not put off by the warnings that parking in downtown Bentonville was a bit tight, and we would have to find a double spot for Khan and Polo. How hard could it be?
Downtown Bentonville is – as Scott put it – hip. Clean, upscale, friendly, and full of coffee houses and upscale eateries. It is, in fact, hard to find a place to park a 11 foot, 6 inch high RV towing a jeep. But we circled around a bit and found two street spots together and got withing 4 blocks or so of the museum. The museum is in the building of the first 5 and 10 that Sam Walton and his wife opened, after moving on from his Ben Franklin store franchise. A replica of his pickup truck is parked outside. His actual pickup truck is parked inside. It is very well done.
The items in the image above were returned for various humorous reasons:
– This thermometer was returned to a Walmart store when the customer copmlained, “It never had the correct time.”
– The customer who returned this mixer believed it was “possessed.”
– When the customer returned this toaster, she told the associate the plug wouldn’t fit in her wall and it must belong to a different country. Turns out, she never removed the plastic prong cover!
– A customer returned this printer in 2018, even though she had no problem printing sharp, colorful photographs. No matter how hard she tried, though, “the printer would not print any of her videos.”
Scott couldn’t shake the comparison to the Biff Tannen Museum in Back to the Future, despite the fact that Sam Walton was not – most Americans would agree – evil in the slightest. He was a successful entrepreneur who focused on change, innovation, his customers, and his employees. The market capitalization of Walmart briefly crossed one trillion dollars. However, during 2026 Amazon just edged past Walmart in revenue.
The museum was great – lots of great exhibits on the history of Walmart and such. The cover image for this post is an animated holographic likeness of Sam Walton. He(?) provides quips and commentary based on keyword inputs from a live narrator who also takes questions from the audience. After an hour or so, we had all the Walmart history we could handle, so it was back to Khan and on to Oklahoma.
We found Zans, and then found someone who would let us in. Not a very impressive place after the posh lakeside digs at Lake Dardanelle – no picnic table, for example, unless we stole one from one of the other site. The bathhouse is a single room that used to serve either gender, with all but one sink, toilet, and shower remaining. A creek, but also a noisy bridge across it. But it has power and water, and other than the slight traffic noise it seems we will sleep well tonight. Scott tested this with an hour-long nap soon after arriving.