Arkansas Welcome Center

For a Welcome Center, this place is pretty freaking awesome. Coming from Houston, I’d driven about five hours before I passed the state line and arriving here so I needed a little rest stop to stretch and stuff, you know.
The Arkansas Welcome Center had everything you need for a rest stop: clean restrooms, friendly staff, lots of brochures plenty of parking, vending machines, free coffee and map, outside gazebos if you feel like picnicking for a little bit before hitting the road again. And most importantly, they had WiFi! For the love of everything that’s good, they freaking had WiFi! I mean, after being on the road where my data connection was spotty at best, having WiFi was amaze-​balls! For real!
If you’re going on a road trip from Texas through Arkansas going anywhere, it’s really not a bad idea to stop here. And FYI, if you keep on going East on I-​30 and you’re running low on gas, the closest exit for gas is going to be at mile 30. Just saying just in case you’re freaking out because there’s no exit sign in sight for miles after you leave this place.

Not that I’ve been to a ton of welcome centers, but I’ve been to maybe a half dozen or so and this one is up there. The one thing I would have liked different was to have the bathroom accessible from inside the building, but that’s probably because I was visiting the welcome center, not just driving through on a road trip for a bathroom break or something like that.
Oddly enough, this welcome center is located about 7 miles into Arkansas. Which I suppose on a road trip it wouldn’t really be noticed and nice to have a little ways out of a town.
My favorite thing about this welcome center however is not that it’s nice, airy, has free coffee, a rocking chair you can sit on with an afghan on it, or a welcome to Arkansas sign that you can take a picture with, but the little maps they have on top of each section of pamphlets and brochures. Most visitors centers have these maps, but this location (or all Arkansas welcome centers, idk) have one that’s made of wood, with each county/​area being a separate wooden block, and they’re glued together on a piece of metal, with 1 county/​area being missing from the map, so you know which county/​area you are looking at the information for.
Anyways, good location. Employees are friendly and ask you where you’re coming from and where you’re going to. Never been a relevant question for me since all three times I’ve been I … never mind, it just has never been a relevant question for me. But for most who are traveling from A to B with this being a thorough-​way, it’s all cool I suppose.

Driving into Arkansas to eat at a place we found by accident and LOVED but could not remember the name for, we came here. What a nice place to make a pit stop and get some info. The grounds are well kept, with areas for big trucks far separate from passenger vehicles. The grounds are beautiful. There are places to walk your pup and places to picnic. Inside, there is a beautiful facility with artifacts and books, clean restrooms and really nice people that can help you out. The lady we spoke to was really nice. We can stop here any time when venturing into Arkansas.

I would suggest taking a potty break here, especially if you are on your way to Little Rock. There aren’t many places to stop until you reach Little Rock.
Bathrooms were clean. There is also a playground for the kids to run off some energy. Tons of parking for cars and trucks.