A Short Weekend Trip

 

As it worked out, my wife had an extra day of vacation to burn and so we took a three day weekend to recover some old territory for us. My wife's aunt, who also went with us on short notice on our prior road trip, is still with us and hadn't been to this part of the country. The six of us loaded up in the mini-van, emphasis on the mini after having driven a 15 passenger van over 4000 miles recently. We drove at a leisurely pace down to Bentonville, Arkansas, home of the very beautiful Crystal Bridges Art Museum. We checked into our motel room and after looking around, found an interesting place to eat supper called "MELD kitchen + sandwich bar" (using that same punctuation and letter sizing).

It is a small place with a limited menu but I decided I was in the mood for a burger and saw Carlito's Way listed on their menu. The menu said it had sautéed portabellas, oyster mushrooms, caramelized onions, swiss cheese, garlic aioli and served on a brioche bun. I noticed it had no mention of meat but the description looked so good I ordered it anyway. Both the waitress and my wife then told me it didn't have meat  in questioning manners and I assured them that I noticed that already and was fine with that. When it came, I dug in and was blown away. It was by far the best burger I have ever eaten, with or without meat. If I can source the mushrooms, I'm going to have to try to replicate this for my culinary repertoire. 

After the delightful Carlito's Way burger, my wife really wanted to stop at a nearby Filipino restaurant for some halo halo, a popular Filipino summertime dessert containing shaved ice, coconut milk, sweetened beans, fresh fruit and other available ingredients. The term halo halo literally means mix mix. Well we couldn't see a restaurant at the address listed but we saw several food trucks and one of them was indeed the Filipino one and so we had a round of halo halo.

The following day, we went to Crystal Bridges Museum. Not only is their art collection quite good, but the sculpture park that surrounds the museum on probably miles of paved trails is quite interesting as well. I won't bore you with the dozens of pictures I took but will show you one of my favorites that was new to me since the last visit. In a small room, maybe 10 feet by 10 feet, an artist had installed mirrors on every surface, floor, walls and ceilings, and then hung lit lanterns up. The effect was really trippy and seemed to go everywhere to infinity. They only let small groups or individuals in for one minute and then the next person in line came in and we had to enter out the back side of the exhibit. Many people were going in it multiple times.

Above is another shot of the "bridges" that connect the various galleries that comprise the museum. The one that dominates this photo is actually their connected restaurant where we ate lunch as we continued to enjoy the museum and sculptures. 

That evening, we drove to the family cabin further to the east and spent the night before heading home the following day. It was a short vacation but certainly an enjoyable one and one that I won't forget soon, at least not the Carlito's Way burger. 

When we got home, I went to turn on water to the house and reignite the water heater when I noticed the scene above. I have know several people over the years who have left on vacation without shutting off their water only to come home to flooding and thousands of dollars of damage. So I just got in the habit of shutting off the water and it paid off this time for me. My water heater had sprung a leak while we were away but only leaked out the 50 gallons it contained. That was the good news. The bad news is that the soonest I could get a new one installed by our plumber was four to five days later which meant that hot shower I like to take upon return from a vacation was going to have to be a cold one, maybe a couple times over.

[As I write this post, the plumber is here now installing the new water heater, three days later and one cold shower later. Hopefully I can get that hot shower later tonight or at least sometime tomorrow morning.]