Hope, Arkansas

We just returned from our big summer road trip.  As expected, it was very memorable, but also extremely exhausting, and expensive.  This year, just like our last road trip 2 years ago, we drove east.  We stopped at several cities, some for just a few hours, some for a day, and some for several days.  This year we visited:  Hope, Arkansas - Memphis, Tennessee (including Graceland) - Nashville, Tennessee, and finally, Washington D.C. (where we spent the bulk of our trip.)

I'll be posting pictures from each stop over the next few days, so I'll start with our first stop, which was Hope, Arkansas.

Hope, Arkansas is the birthplace of President Bill Clinton.  This town would just be a blip on the map if it wasn't for Clinton, as there was very little else to see there.  The town seemed pretty run down and depressing.  Many businesses and homes were boarded up, and the front window of Clinton's house looked like it had a bullet hole in it.  I guess the ideal place to go for the full Clinton experience would be Little Rock (which we missed this time.)  Little Rock has the presidential library, and lots of other Clinton related activities (hopefully none of them X rated.)

             (Picture above: Clinton's birthplace home)


After spending the night at the local Best Western (after about a 6 hour drive from Austin), we took a guided tour of the Clinton house, which was actually his grandparents house.  The house was nice, but I could easily see why someone would want to get out of that town as soon as possible.  We left pretty quickly after the tour, heading for Memphis.