Field Trips
ROCK CLUBS, geology students, and visitors have all contacted us about field trips.
If your club has been on a field trip and would like to share it with us, please email us at the address below. We are always getting requests for places groups can go to.
A field trip by canoe. Few experiences can compare to a float trip down the Buffalo River. The park's geology, with its numerous caves, cliffs, sinkholes, waterfalls, springs, and interesting rock formations, typifies the Arkansas Ozarks.
A float trip on Lake Ouachita. It can be self guided, or if you provide the boat and a bona fide interest group (not a family reunion) of 15 or more, the Corps of Engineers will provide a guide to explain the lake features.
If you are interested in geology, then one of the crystal mines in which you get to see the veins and host rock in place would be what you want. Wegner's Blue Phantom mine would make a good trip. Prices vary depending on location, how much time you spend there (a day, a 1/2 day) and size of your group.
Check feepay mines for information about these places.
Road Trips. On the way to the Ozarks from Hot Springs, you will note a couple of significant changes in topography. First, when you leave the Ouachita Mountains with its narrow twisty roads to the Arkansas Valley with broad valleys and scattered broad flattopped mountains. Then when you leave the Valley and enter the Ozarks you will note twisty roads, v-shaped narrow valleys and broad flat plains.
Each region has some unique geology. When you cross from the Ouachitas into the Valley, you will be leaving an area dominated by intense folding and thrust and reverse faults and entering an area of open folding and widely spaced faulting. When you leave the Valley and enter the Ozarks, you are entering a highly dissected plateau region with only sparse normal faulting. The rocks of the Ozark dip gently to the south at about 1 degree. You have also crossed from south to north from deep basin or trench stratigraphy across to shallow continental shelf facies. The ages of the units are all Paleozoic, ranging from Cambrian to Pennsylvanian.
The Arkansas Geological Survey has Roadside Geology information on their website for downloading.