Exploring Bentonville, Arkansas: Mountain biking for the FIRST time (+ coffee and food!)

After spending the last couple weeks exploring Kentucky and Missouri we have made our way to our final new state of the year Arkansas. Arkansas is nicknamed the natural state because of the abundance of nature throughout the state including mountains clear lakes and streams and so much more and over the next few days we're going to explore as much of the state as we can including both small and large cities beautiful hikes Welcome to Arkansas Despite growing up in Texas we have never really spent any time here in Arkansas but recently some of our best friends took a trip here and we saw how beautiful and how much fun it looked so we knew we had to spend some time here on our way back to Texas for the holidays. We are currently in Bentonville Arkansas which is in northwest Arkansas and tomorrow is this guy's birthday but we're celebrating it today with some of his favorite things and something he has wanted to try. First things first on Adam's birthday extravaganza we had to get ourselves some coffee so we came to a spot called Onyx Coffee Lab I think they have a few locations in the surrounding area but this place is just so dang cool the inside looks gorgeous we unfortunately couldn't go in but from what I've seen online looks beautiful their cups are super beautiful we've just been so excited to try this place for a long time. They have some delicious drinks to choose from too I got a miso caramel latte and you got a pumpkin oat latte and yeah these cups are super cool they have cool little details on here this little Arkansas logo on there. Oh yeah did you see that? No. And then they it's a 12 ounce cup and they make it cool with like roman numerals and all those olive branches. It says never settle for good enough. Yeah cool quote on there. So I guess this coffee won't just be good no no no it's so good this is delicious it's just awesome pumpkin latte I have nothing else to say besides it's incredible very caramely very sweet very delicious oh oh yeah this is really good too yeah you can taste a little bit of the oat but the pumpkin's like really nice you know what would be the best though like a miso pumpkin caramel latte now we're talking yeah just like share them together oh man awesome and now we're ready to conquer the rewind and now we're ready to conquer the day so one of the things that Bentonville is most famous for is Walmart in 1950 a businessman named Sam Walton opened up Walton's five and dime this building right behind me and then in 1962 he opened up the first ever Walmart in Rogers Arkansas which is just down the road since we sleep at a lot of Walmarts we felt it was very fitting that we finally got to see its birthplace and it's actually a museum and an ice cream shop so if you want to learn more about Walmart's history you can do that while you're here in Bentonville not only is the Bentonville area famous for Walmart but they're also big on mountain biking and we even read an article that claimed this area is kind of like a Disney World for mountain bikers and if you've seen our route of the Hiawatha video you know that I've been wanting to mountain bike for a while and she hasn't been too keen on it but in the video we have video evidence she said she would give it a try but she said on the way down almost when we were through she said I'm I'm ready to do it let's do it so I don't know maybe we'll find somewhere soon to go mountain biking for the first time that'll be so fun I will say the route of the Hiawatha got me way more comfortable on a bike I would say that was more like trail riding versus mountain biking it was a lot more like even terrain but it was trail so it was kind of like a hybrid so it got me warmed up for it and we'd like to set our the expectations this is not gonna be like flying high flying getting mad air and like tricks it's probably gonna be like us just riding and then maybe we'll do like an inch we hope we can do something cool but we really don't know what to expect but I truly am very excited about this all right we're all kitted up we got our bike we got our helmet we're ready to go we got it we rented these bikes for a few hours from Spoke Adventures here in Bentonville now it's the hard part we got to fit them in the van and get to the trail so there's tons of places to mountain bike in and around Bentonville but we chose Kohler Mountain Bike Preserve because there's tons of different trails for different ability levels and there's tons of cool looking structures all over the place so let's hit the trail oh no I got so scared wipe out already this may be pretty interesting maybe we should start on that little family-friendly one we should go on the paved one this is a lot scarier than I thought it would be if you're watching this you're already making fun of us just keep it to yourself we're like two minutes in we know we're not doing great so far this is very out of my comfort zone I'm all right we're taking a pause on this uh green trail to share a bit of thoughts here it's a lot harder than I thought it was gonna be we're both struggling pretty hard I don't know there's like big rocks in the trail there's kind of some steep ways down there's tons of leaves on the ground that if you hit your brakes you're starting to slide going uphill is really hard going downhill is scary it's fun but it's scary at the same time so we planned on taking a mid-bike sesh coffee break at this place called the airship it's a super new location of this coffee shop called airship coffee and it's a really cool looking building it's like a concrete spaceship like landed here in the park looks super cool but unfortunately like I said it's brand new they're kind of doing their soft opening still so they closed like an hour and a half ago kind of a bummer but if you're in this area and you're coming to the Kohler mountain bike preserve you should definitely check it out did I get air that's a centimeter perfect Adam just filmed me riding some bumps and let me tell you I felt way cooler in my head and then when I watched the clip I was like oh I look super lame but in my head I'm like it's just way more enjoyable if you stick to your skill level because I'm having so much fun just flying on this easy one but on the harder ones having to walk the bike a ton so yeah it's just like when we went skiing a long time ago I got a little over ambitious that time and just not as fun and it's okay if you look a little lame because in your head you can feel super cool that was way too much fun oh boy I didn't know if we were gonna make it back but we made it back to the van no injuries I have a couple scrapes here and there but nothing major I do have some dirt mud spots on me so I look like I look the part I think but man it was it was fun it was it started out really rough to be honest with me almost wiping out right away and about midway through I was ready to quit I told Adam just go without me I'll just sit here I don't want to ruin the fun and I had to take we had to take a little bit of a break so I could compose myself a bit but like I said earlier once we stuck to what we knew we could do a decent job at it was way more fun way more fun yeah just like you mentioned with the skiing I feel like the the the what's the bunny runs or whatever it's the level from that to like the green or the first level sometimes it feels like it's a big jump and I kind of felt like that here but once we found our footing on the on the good vibrations where we could like comfortably get up to speed get some I could get the front wheel off the ground a little bit so that was cool and uh so yeah we just went around that a few times and went through the water a bunch of times oh yeah that was so fun so yeah sticking to your ability level what you're comfortable with and I think if I went around it a dozen or few more times then I could go get on that Esther's loop that we started on that was really rough turns out that was the that was the one that I almost wiped out on one of the easy ones yeah but uh yeah we probably didn't look cool at all yeah we felt hardcore I will say I was flying I was like man I feel so batty right now I know we didn't look that hardcore yeah you feel like you're ripping through the woods but then when you see yourself on camera it's like stroll through the park but we are pooped my thighs hurt that was a killer workout I don't think we're ready to conquer like a real mountain yet but I definitely do it again yeah this was a good starting point though despite where we started if you stay on that good vibrations one a bit that was like the perfect level I think for us yeah I agree but we're hungry we're hungry it's time to go get him a birthday lunch oh my gosh this food looks so bomb we went to a place called Cywalk which is actually in Rogers but really close to Bentonville and I already know this is going to be amazing so we got quite a few things so the things that I kind of got for myself well I'm going to share because it's a lot of food is this corn grilled corn it has some sauce on it some spices it looks delicious and 100% what I'm most excited for we got the large and we're going to split it are these pork belly fries so it's crinkle cut fries there's pork belly on there tons of cheese there's sauce spices and there's an egg on top and some onions it smells so good yeah it does oh my gosh I am pumped and what I got for myself and I might be nice and sharing a few nibbles here and there but uh so starting over here I got what a bao a steam bun I've never had one before so I'm very excited for this so this is the duck duck goose bao so it's it's a five spice duck so a steam bao there with some sauce cabbage they give you some shrimp chips not a huge fan of shrimp chips but these are colored so I'm going to try these second bao is the uh smoked pork belly can't go wrong with that so you got smoked pork belly in there these are the more colorful ones those look cool we first tried them on our on our Orlando vlog at a Lao street yeah yeah yeah we got a bag of them they're okay so hopefully these are a little bit better maybe uh and then so I got a banh mi I haven't had a banh mi since uh the last time we were in Houston we went to a place called I don't remember the name of it but it's in the vlog one of our Houston vlogs if you want to go back and look at that this one is the pork one I believe so I think it's kind of like a traditional banh mi so um it's like a mini baguette and then all the kind of traditional banh mi toppings and what's it called Adam oh yeah it's called a uh woo pig suey so uh the University of Arkansas is just down the road in Fayetteville and that's what they say when they're cheering their team on here is your weapon buddy oh look at this bite right here oh my gosh this is like so much cheese we have had our fair share of loaded fries we've had pho fries carne asada fries but these take the cake the best fries I've ever had loaded with goodness so much flavor so cheesy it's so good it's so good it's about time I totally knew you were gonna say that because I just thought of that joke too we'll start with the duck duck goose I don't even know if I've ever had duck before this is gonna be a oh man this is like I'm never oh wow the the feeling of this is so different feel that now that's a pillow that is that's like a memory phone yeah memory foam mattress that I'm about to eat right here that's interesting a delicious memory foam mattress so this has a very interesting flavor I love the bun the duck's really good the veggies are good and it's five spice and so I'm guessing it's kind of sweet and then I guess this uh sauce in there is probably sweet too yeah I'm not sure what it is but it's really good I don't know I don't know what to compare it to because I've never had anything quite like it this one is awesome too the pork has a nice it's smoked so you get that smoked flavor it's nice and fatty and porky and I think the bun is what's sweet I don't know but it's really kind of chewy it's really good the corn has a delicious grilled flavor and it has this like kimchi sauce on it that's a little sweet oh it's just so good I I love grilled corn but when you like load it up with stuff it's even better this thing is awesome this bread tastes so fresh the outside is kind of crispy inside's nice and pillowy I love that word pillowy if you haven't caught on yet the pork's in there is delicious the veggies taste really fresh the sauce I'm not sure what the sauce is but it's really good too this thing's excellent all right I made Adam take Kona on a walk so I can decorate the van for him for his birthday pretty sure he knows what I'm up to because it's kind of hard to keep secrets when you're with someone 24 7 and live in a very small space fun fact my least favorite sound in the entire world is probably balloons popping so I'm kind of scared to do this all right now if y'all can do me a huge favor please please wish Adam a happy belated by the time you see this birthday down in the comments he is truly the greatest guy in the entire world he does so much for me and Kona every day he cooks he cleans makes me coffee every morning he takes care of Kona he does all the driving so I can focus on my day job as well as editing vlogs writing guides which he also helps out so much with he's truly superman I am so dang lucky and this adventure in this dream would mean nothing without him or at least be nowhere near as fun without him and Adam I just adore the crap out of you love you so much you're my best friend the best husband in the whole wide world happy birthday thank you this is well done this is very nice so if you saw our St. Louis vlog which was two vlogs ago you saw we had Clementine's ice cream it was so dang good we had to go back in get a pint or two there's another one in the freezer and as you can see our freezer doesn't hold up for ice cream very well it's kind of like a milkshake maybe now we also haven't mentioned but Kona's birthday is in a few days too she's gonna be seven years old so we got her a treat some pumpkin pie happy birthday Kona we love you I'm so pumped to crush this ice cream this has been torture looking at this in the freezer all week happy birthday oh no happy birthday I love you your buddies cute happy birthday Adam yeah is that what you got me a herd of little goats oh man I don't know what you can't beat that