Spring Break Adventure - Walmart Museum

On Sunday afternoon, Heather took us to Bentonville, Arkansas, to visit the Walmart Museum. Located on the square in Bentonville, it's in the original Walmart store and has a 5 and 10 store (Five and Dime) and an old-fashioned ice cream parlor in the front and the museum in the back.

There were a lot of people on the square the day that we were there. There's a little pavilion area in the middle of the square and there were people sitting around listening to some live music.

The museum is really neat and has a lot of artifacts from the Walton family and some interactive displays about the history of Walmart. Noah had a lot of fun looking at the interactive parts of the museum. 

Noah found a lot of toys displayed in the museum. 

Sam Walton's office is still in tact in the museum. It's enclosed in glass so you can't go in there but it looks like he just walked away from it. You have to wonder about all the meetings that took place in this exact space.

One of the neatest parts of the museum was the wall of returns. As you may know, Walmart has a very liberal return policy and they'll take pretty much anything back. These were a collection of the best reasons to return items. The thermometer? It didn't show the correct time!  The toy fishing pole? It didn't catch any fish!

They had an entire wall of pins that I thought was pretty neat. This picture is just a small selection of the pins that they had. 

At the end of the tour was the ice cream shop. We each chose a different flavor of ice cream to try. Sam Walton's favorite flavor was butter pecan but none of us chose that one. I was actually going to order butter pecan but my mouth said cookies 'n cream instead. Oh well!

Travel Guide

Would you visit here again? 

Yes, it was a fun stop. We did not spend a lot of time here but it was worth the stop. I could have spent more time here reading all the backstory on Walmart but the kids were not all that interested in reading that part. 

Favorite thing about the trip?

Noah: Getting an ice cream cone!

Emily: The ice cream. 

Jennifer: Getting some ice cream. 

Best photo op?

Getting a selfie by Sam Walton's old truck was pretty cool.

Travel Tips?

Check the Walmart Museum's website to see if there are any special events going on. Also, I'd like to go back and check out more of the surrounding shops in downtown Bentonville. On the first Friday of every warm-ish month, Bentonville has a festival in their downtown area. It's called First Friday and you can find a schedule on the Bentonville website. 

What's your favorite flavor of ice cream?