Eureka Springs

Joseph and I decided to have a day date today to celebrate our one month wedding anniversary, which was Monday. (Can you believe its already been a month????) We celebrated Monday night with a candle light dinner and home made parmesan chicken (YUMMY), but we wanted to get out and do something fun this weekend. 

We decided to make a day trip to Eureka Springs to watch the downhill race at the Fat Tire Festival, and go to Turpentine Creek which is a wild-life refuge. The Fat Tire downhill bicycle race was our first stop for the morning, and neither one of us realized that we would have to hike a ways uphill to get to our destination. That led to me being extremely sweaty and not in the greatest mood....and I fell on the way down the hill and busted a blood vessel in my hand and rolled my ankle a bit. It wasn't the best morning, but Joe got to see the part of the race that he wanted, so I sucked it up and we went on with our day. PS...after seeing the downhill race, I don't like the idea of my husband mountain biking anymore! It is so much more dangerous than I thought!!!!

After the race, we went and ate at a little diner, and we had some time before we wanted to head to Turpentine Creek. Joe had never seen Christ of the Ozarks, or Big Jesus as I like to call him, so we decided to go there to kill some time. 

 Before we were married, Joe used to always joke "make sure theres room for Jesus" when we sat down next to each other on the couch or something.....this picture captures that saying PERFECTLY! 

After having our come to Jesus meeting, we headed down to Turpentine Creek. Turpentine Creek is a refuge for big cats (lions, tigers...and they have a bear) that people have tried to domesticate into being pets. Obviously for the common sense using person, that is an awful idea, but this place had over 100 big cats that they had rescued from private owners. 

This is a liger....it really does exist!

This white tiger was gorgeous...but so aggressive with the other tiger next to her!

This little bear...or big bear..was so funny! He was one of the most entertaining animals that we saw. 

Turpentine Creek was overall a really fun experience. We got half price tickets off of living social, which made the experience even better!

Right before we got to Eureka, we saw a sign for "Dinosaur World" on the side of the road. If you don't know the story about Dinosaur World, I shall tell you. My cousin Bruce got married the day before my ninth birthday in Eureka Springs, so our family spent my whole birthday, driving the five hours back to Texas. To try to make my day more enjoyable, my family stopped at Dinosaur World. We had no clue what it was, but we decided to go. Basically, Dinosaur World consisted of huge concrete statues of dinosaurs.....and nothing else. At the time, I was infuriated and since then, I have said that it was my worst birthday ever. Last year, I realized that I only lived about an hour from Dinosaur World, so I looked it up. I learned that it had closed down, but I hadn't really thought anymore about it. When we saw the sign this morning, both Joe and I really wanted to try to find it and see if anything was there. To our surprise, we actually got to see a lot. You can't drive through it, but I videoed from the road.......I was speechless to be back there again. 

After Dinosaur World, we made one last stop.......the perfect end to our wonderful day. 

I love my husband so much, and I am continually being blessed every day that I get to spend with him. I love that we can go out and spend days like this together! 

Love, 

Samantha