Crystal Bridges Museum Trails

Crystal Bridges Art Museum has an impressive network of miles and miles of diverse walking and biking trails that are well connected to the city's trail system and Compton Gardens.  Dogs are allowed on the trails ("but", I was told over the phone, "not in the museum".)  If you take a pet, you might want to look at a map online beforehand, as all of the outdoor map boxes were empty today.  

It has been a year since I last visited the trails (I've been to the museum a few times since then) and I'm glad I finally got to check them all out.  The fall foliage was starting to show up with hickories, red buds, dogwoods, and sassafras providing some amazing yellows, pinks, purples, and oranges that paired beautifully with the pines and still green oaks.  Multiple empty frames placed along the trails make a point I greatly appreciate, that nature provides us with limitless, ever-changing, incredible works of art that are free to everyone.  Each trail has its own unique character and perhaps surprisingly for someone who writes hiking books, my favorite was the very manicured...

Crystal Bridges Trail

Bentonville has a nice network of road and mountain biking trails.  Yesterday, Angela and I made our first pilgrimage to the city that Walmart built.  We parked in the square, walked by the original Walmart, sampled popsicles, ate at the delicious and fancy Tusk and Trotter, and then got on our bikes.
We quickly reached Compton Gardens after heading north on A St.  Where the paved trail forks, we took the Art Trail to the right.  This trail is short, but has some interesting sights and another plus for the botanically oriented like myself, the trees and shrubs are labeled.  This trail currently dead-ends at the southern entrance to the museum, so we turned around and backtracked to the Crystal Bridges Trail.  After turning right on the trail, we followed it through the woods for a while, stopping at the construction viewing platform and some of the sculptures along the path.  One slightly shocking thing I noticed, is that there is a dirt path paralleling the paved trail that is not just used by, but is actually intended for mountain bikers.  Pretty cool for a trail named after a museum!
After the museum area, the paved trail passes a wastewater treatment plant and runs along a road.  Where the trail borders the road, it is separated by a concrete barrier.  Way to go Bentonville.  As I made clear in another blog entry, this is the only way to make a bike lane on a road truly safe.
For the next mile or two, the paved trail is surround by tons of mountain biking trails and courses.  We stopped for a break near the northern most marker on the map below to watch lots of mountain bikers whiz around a fun looking course.
From there we followed the trail west then south past a new-looking dog park with a restroom and parking area.  We then followed the Blue Route, which simply followed some roads back to the square.  Had we known that, we might have just taken the trail back.