1,000 Places to See in the U.S.A. & Canada Before You Die (49 page)

Today the Greenbrier stands grandly amid 6,500 scenic acres, offering 803 rooms and promising over 50 activities. Golf is the leading attraction, with three 18-hole championship courses plus a respected golf academy run by
Golf Digest.
The Greenbrier Course, site of both the Ryder (1979) and Solheim (1994) Cups, was laid out in 1924 and redesigned by Jack Nicklaus in 1977. Elsewhere, the 38,000-square-foot spa continues the Greenbrier’s 230-year tradition of aquatherapy with sulphur soaks in the same healing waters that once cured Mrs. Anderson. Activities like tennis on indoor and outdoor courts, horseback riding, fishing, mountain biking, and even falconry assure that non-golfers will hardly feel neglected.

A house-proud staff of 1,800 exemplifies the resort’s characteristic elegance and decorum. Expect musicians at teatime in the spacious, marble-floored lobby and later at dinner, where a jacket-and-tie dress code prevails beneath sparkling crystal chandeliers. The decor, redone by designer Dorothy Draper after WWII, features a mix of stripes and flowers and an unconventionally bright color palette. Greenbrier’s most unique feature is its underground fallout shelter. During the Eisenhower administration, the government excavated a huge complex beneath the property intended to house members of Congress in the event of nuclear war. The bunker was finally declassified after
The Washington Post
reported its existence in 1992, and is now open for tours. Oddly enough, its kitchen and dining room are used as the Greenbrier’s Culinary Arts Center, which offers cooking courses like the perennially sold-out BBQ University, taught by grilling guru Steven Raichlen, author of
The Barbecue Bible.
The Greenbrier is a major stop on the Midland Trail (U.S. Route 60), a buffalo trail followed by Indians and pioneers. Offering beautiful vistas of wooded mountains and rolling farmland, it travels the entire length of the state.

W
HERE:
120 miles southeast of Charleston; 300 W. Main St. Tel 800-624-6070 or 304-536-1110;
www.greenbrier.com
.
C
OST:
from $307 (off-peak), from $408 (peak); greens fees from $185.
M
IDLAND
T
RAIL
H
IGHWAY:
Tel 866-ROUTE-60 or 304-343-6001;
www.midlandtrail.com
.
B
EST TIMES:
summer for B
BQ
University; Oct for foliage.

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A
RKANSAS
•

K
ENTUCKY
•

L
OUISIANA
•

M
ISSISSIPPI
•

M
ISSOURI
•

T
ENNESSEE

Pristine and Free-Flowing

Arkansas

The Buffalo is that great rarity: 150 miles of pure, wild water with not a dam in sight. Snaking past towering limestone bluffs, it is one of the nation’s prettiest places for canoeing and a stellar example of why Arkansas
, with its mountains, rivers, and abundant wildlife, is called “The Natural State.”

Sufficiently scenic to be singled out for protection as America’s first national river back in 1972, the emerald green Buffalo starts as a trickle in the Ozarks and flows eastward before merging with the White River (see p. 396). A 95,000-acre national park stretches for 135 miles on both sides, protecting a magnificent mix of oak and hickory forests, open fields, and box canyons—a wild landscape that supports mink, beaver, bobcats, even elk and black bears.

The best way to see the Buffalo is by canoe—whether on half-day trips or leisurely 10-day explorations that take you camping down the length of the river. You can bring your own canoe or rent one from outfitters who set you in the river at any one of 20 access points and pick you up whenever and wherever you want to call it a day. To navigate the scenic upper Buffalo, featuring the 500-foot Big Bluff, you can rent a canoe or rubber raft at the Buffalo Outdoor Center in Ponca; the center also offers log cabins and can even arrange hotair balloon trips high above the river. The wing-chair crowd might prefer Azalea Falls Lodge, a B&B with three bedrooms and a private cabin.

Along the river there’s a stretch for every skill level, from the Class I and II white-water rapids of the upper Buffalo in early spring to the easy family jaunts of the middle and lower Buffalo, which can be floated year-round. The parkland on either side of the Buffalo invites other forms of exploration, especially hiking. The Rimrock Cove Ranch offers guided horseback rides and even hayrides on trails that wind through woods and meadows up to the top of the bluffs for panoramic scenes that have changed precious little over the centuries.

W
HERE
: Tyler Bend visitors center in St. Joe is 117 miles northwest of Little Rock. Tel 870-439-2502;
www.nps.gov/buff
.
B
UFFALO
O
UTDOOR
C
ENTER
: Ponca. Tel 800-221-5514 or 870-861-5514;
www.buffaloriver.com
.
Cost:
$50 per canoe per day; cabins from $99; balloon rides $250 per person.
A
ZALEA
F
ALLS
L
ODGE
: Kingston. Tel 870-420-3941;
www.azaleafalls.com
.
Cost:
from $150.
R
IMROCK
C
OVE
R
ANCH
: Ponca. Tel 870-553-2556;
www.rimrockcoveranch.com
.
Cost:
$60 per person for 3-hour horseback ride.
B
EST TIMES
: spring and early summer for float trips.

For landlubbers, the Buffalo National River area contains over 100 miles of maintained hiking trails.

Victorian Village in the Mountains

Arkansas

Literally built into the side of the Ozarks, the tiny village of Eureka Springs is a charming collection of Victorian architecture and higgledy-piggledy streets snaking past cliff-clinging homes, confounding new visitors
. Folks easily fall in love with this place, so appealingly antithetical to modern urban planning. It is the only city in the country whose entire downtown area is on the National Register of Historic Places—and there’s not a traffic light to be found.

With a population that hovers around 2,000, Eureka Springs is tucked away in the remote and lush northwest corner of Arkansas. Surrounded by miles of lakes and rivers and packed with small shops, galleries, B&Bs, and hotels, Eureka Springs’ Victorian charm is remarkably intact. Founded as a health resort in 1879, Eureka benefited from its 63 reputedly curative springs, used for both drinking and bathing at a time when society was mad for water cures. Health-seekers immediately began arriving by stage, but the resort town’s success was assured with the arrival of the railroad in 1882 and wilderness was transformed into a flourishing resort spa.

A French Gothic “Grand Old Lady of the Ozarks” from the town’s heyday, the 1886 Crescent Hotel (a sister property to the younger 1905 Basin Park Hotel) is so famous for ghosts that it conducts daily tours of spectral sightings. Thrill-seekers always request room 218, where guests have heard the cries of a falling man. Scared yet? Calm down at the hotel’s modern New Moon Spa or with a historic bath experience at the Palace Hotel and Bath House, around since 1901. Most people go for “The Works”—a mineral bath followed by a eucalyptus sauna in an old-fashioned wooden steam cabinet (the kind you’ve seen in photos where your head sticks out).

The best food in town is barbecue. Bubba’s serves up gigantic pork shoulder sandwiches and tender baby back ribs; true pork junkies come to do battle with the Bubba Link, a tube of deliciously fatty, highly spiced hickory-smoked ground meat smothered with thick chili and gobs of cheddar cheese.

Eureka Springs was rediscovered by hippies in the 1970s and ever since has been a haven for artists, with more than 30 galleries. An independent Ozark spirit permeates the town, at its best during the May Festival of the Arts. Locals turn out in droves for the White Street Walk, when artists open up their studios and homes to anyone who cares to visit, while outside there’s dancing in the moonlit streets. Music lovers arrive in town for the Eureka Springs Blues Festival and Ozark Folk Festival, both promising to keep various clubs and bars around town full with the sound of music.

The No. 1 tourist draw for the area is the outdoor drama called the
Great Passion Play,
a 4-hour reenactment of Christ’s final days. Nearby is a monumental sculpture known as Christ of the Ozarks—an all-white 67-foot-high figure with arms starkly outstretched, suggesting a cross. Dedicated in 1966, it is the work of Emmet Sullivan, who had his training in the field of oversized sculpture while working at Mount Rushmore (see p. 657).

W
HERE
: 180 miles northwest of Little Rock.
Visitor info
: Tel 866-566-9387 or 479-253-7333;
www.eurekasprings.org
.
C
RESCENT
H
OTEL
: Tel 800-342-9766 or 479-253-9766;
www.crescent-hotel.com
.
Cost:
from $99 (off-peak), from $169 (peak).
P
ALACE
H
OTEL AND
B
ATH
H
OUSE
: Tel 479-253-8400;
www.palacehotelbathhouse.com
.
Cost:
$79 for “The Works”; rooms from $140 (off-peak), from $149 (peak).
BUBBA’S
: Tel 479-253-7706.
Cost:
Bubba Link $7.
G
REAT
P
ASSION
P
LAY
: Tel 800-882-7529 or 479-253-8559;
www.greatpassionplay.com
.
Cost:
$24.
When:
May–Oct.
B
EST TIMES
: May for the May Festival of the Arts; early June for Eureka Springs Blues Festival; 1st or 2nd weekend of Oct for Ozark Folk Festival.

Where the King Biscuit Show Began

Helena, Arkansas

If you want to hear authentic Delta blues, just show up in October for the free Arkansas Blues & Heritage Festival. With a tradition of cotton-growing and sharecropping in the deep alluvial soils of the Delta, eastern Arkansas is
closer culturally to Mississippi than to the mountainous western part of the state. And nowhere is that clearer than in the small river-port town of Helena (population 15,000), the self-anointed “Buckle on the Blues Belt.”