JOPLIN, Mo. — June is usually a good month at Geek Central. My wife, The Lovely Paula Hadsall, and I picked a wedding date that would be easy to remember: June 7, 2008. (We wanted to get married at 5 p.m. so we could say we got married at 5, 6, 7, 8. Three out of four ain’t bad.)

We knew we wanted to take a trip for our fourth anniversary (another happy coincidence: We got married in a presidential election year, so every fourth year, we can make jokes about running for re-marriage). But we didn’t know exactly where we wanted to go. We had a general notion of driving down to Arkansas, but that was it.

Fortunately, the decisions were made for us by a cat that was alive and dead at the same time.

My anniversary present from her was a Schrodinger’s Cat Executive Decision Maker.

Let me stop for a second: All this will make a lot more sense if you know what Schrodinger’s cat is. There are much more wonderfully detailed, and accurate, descriptions at trusted sites on the Internet.

For now, all you need to know about the S.C.E.D.M. is that it’s a little box with a door. When you slide open the door, it shows either a live cat or a dead cat. The instructions say, "Interpret this how you like."

We figured that, roughly, alive equals yes and dead equals no. With that in mind, we started our trip with the question: "Should we see the Crystal Bridges art museum in Bentonville?"

Kitteh was alive. Kitteh said yes. So that was stop No. 1.



Impressive museum

We had no idea that Crystal Bridges would be so fantastic. The museum, founded by Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton and sponsored by Wal-Mart, houses a collection of American art five centuries old.

The collection features works by Thomas Hart Benton, Maxwell Parrish, Norman Rockwell, Andy Warhol and many more. The museum is nestled around Crystal Spring and hovers over a creek, so the scenery is also gorgeous (in fact, the museum also offers a nature center).

Aside from creepy security volunteers who get a little too close, and expensive diet sodas, the museum is an incredible attraction.

When my sister told me that the Walton heiress ticked off the art community to build that museum, I was even more enamored with it. Seems the established art community thought that Walton was buying all these great works of art for her own private Wal-mansion. When the museum’s construction was announced, the art community was still ticked off, because she built a museum worthy of Chicago, New York or Philadelphia in Northwest Arkansas; in the home city of the guy who started Wal-Mart. Let ‘em be ticked. The museum makes for an outstanding road trip.



Dinner discovery

TLP and I ran into problems with finding a place to eat in Bentonville. The cat led us to the Bentonville square, where we visited the Walmart museum. It’s the site of the Walton’s Five and Dime, the old mom-and-pop store that formed into a conglomerate that killed a bunch of mom-and-pop stores.

We asked the cat if we should eat on the square in Bentonville. Kitteh said no.

We then asked if we should ask one of the passers-by for a recommendation. Kitteh said no again.

Getting a little stumped, we asked kitteh if we should move on to Fayetteville for dinner.

Again, dead kitteh. Three dead kittehs posed a challenge.

Fortunately, TLP found a listing on the Internet for Tusk and Trotter, a restaurant a block away from the square. Loophole. Kitteh agreed. And what an amazing dinner we had. I had a baseball-cut tri-tip with some pickled veggies and garlic mashed potatoes. Fantastic.

But TLP’s was even better. She had fried chicken with carrot-cake waffles. This may seem blasphemous to friends of Annie, Mary and Barto, but Tusk and Trotter has their fried chicken beat.

I guess TLP and I were too shmoopy in feeding each other bites simultaneously -- our server said she’d never seen a couple do that before. But that’s just how geeks in love roll.



Behemoth bookstore

After a few more miles and decisions, we ended up in Fayetteville on a day that didn’t have a University of Arkansas football game scheduled. At the recommendation of intern Sarah Guinn, we found a bookstore that was more like a labyrinth (kitteh agreed with the recommendation).

The Dickson Street Book Shop (lucky coincidence that it’s on Dickson Street, eh?) is a used bookstore that extends for what seems like a city block.

At first glance I saw two high-ceilinged rooms filled with loaded bookshelves. At the back of the wall, I saw a hall also lined with books. When I went in that hall, there was another hall running parallel, also filled with books. There were also shelves that stretched across the hall.

When I got to the end of the hall, there was a doorway that led to yet another filled hall. At the end of that hall was another book-filled room.

TLP and I love bookstores, but this one left us claustrophobic, it was so packed. We found some great finds, including an awesome leather-bound copy of Gregory Maguire’s first two Oz books ("Wicked" and "Son of a Witch"). But we know we left behind a lot of other great finds, just because we couldn’t search them all.

We need to get back there, posthaste. The bookstore (and just about everything the kitteh led us to, including a blueberry wheat beer at the Hog Haus Brewing Company) was a crown jewel in an awesome road trip.