Turning Lemons into Lemonade

 I love road trips.  My mom loves them too, so as big long trips are becoming more difficult, we head for the road.  Our partner in crime over the past few years has been my friend Regina.  The three of us have had the best time visiting the Ozarks, Ohio, and Atlanta and Ashville (Regina couldn't make that trip).  So this year, with all the rain, I decided there would be a super bloom in the desert, and we should go to Borrego Springs.  I have already told you how that turned out.  No flowers, they were all burnt to a crisp, but beautiful landscape, sunrises and sunsets, and beautiful dark skies made it all worthwhile. 

The first road trip we took together was to the The Ozarks.  We had seen a short piece on TV about Eureka Springs (Arkansas) and decided to plan a road trip around it.  We visited Branson, Bentonville, Eureka Springs and Little Rock.  We didn't know much about Bentonville at the time, but have since come to love the city, but all the major hotels were booked, so all I could get was Best Western that sounded ok.  When we arrived, we found out that the reason nothing was available was because Garth Brooks was performing in Fayetteville, just a few miles away.  Well, I've stayed in a lot of hotels in my life, but this had to be the worst.  We found out it was a former drug hangout.  Our room, which barely locked, faced a dumpster filled with garbage and rats.  The blankets on the bed had cigarette burns in them.  The sink in the bathroom was falling off the wall.  Need I go on?  It was either sleep in our clothes on top of the bed or sleep in the car.  We slept on top of the bed, but were out of there at 7am!  But, we made lemons out of lemonade.  We went over to the Museum 21 Hotel (gorgeous), begged them to find us a room (they couldn't), but toured the hotel and its fabulous art.  Then we ate at  a fine dining restaurant in the hotel called The Beehive.  We spent the day in Bentonville visiting Crystal Bridges, viewing the Frank Lloyd Wright house, and taking a tour of the city of Bentonville.  We definitely turned lemons into lemonade.  As bad as the hotel was, everything else we did made up for it. 

Talk about making lemonade out of lemons.  Our trip to see wildflowers turned out to be a bust, but what we got instead was equally beautiful.  I can't wait for our next road trip and the adventures we will have.