TOURS |
EVENTS |
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Monday Guest Tour to Eureka Springs Tuesday Tours |
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Sunday |
TOURS
The Pre-conference tour is Thursday, September 24, to Saturday, September 26. If you wish to spend Wednesday evening at the Embassy Suites Hotel the preferred conference rate has been extended to Wednesday, September 23. Lodging cost for Wednesday night is not included in the pre-conference tour cost.
The tour will leave the Embassy Suites Hotel on Thursday at 3:00 p.m. and travel to Yellville, Arkansas, where you will spend the night at the Eagles Nest Lodge. Dinner will be at your expense at the Front Porch Restaurant.
Friday starts with breakfast on your own. You will then travel to Guion, located on the beautiful White River, to tour Unimin Corporation’s underground sand mine. The St. Peter Sandstone yields high-quality, snow white silica sand for making auto glass and other industrial applications. After the mine tour, you will travel to Blanchard Springs Caverns where you will have a provided box lunch at the picnic grounds near the spring. Blanchard's namesake spring pours out of the mountainside and into a glassy-surfaced trout pond appropriately named Mirror Lake. Nearby is a short, scenic walk to the falls where all water exits from the cavern. This is one of the prettiest spots in the Ozark National Forest and not to be missed. After lunch you will tour Blanchard Springs Cavern, an non-commercialized, world class cave. Led by knowledgeable Forest 
Service guides, the tour winds through water-carved passages, and includes an underground river and the world's largest flowstone. You will spend Friday night at the Ozark Folk Center Lodge in Mountain View. The Ozark Folk Center (www.ozarkfolkcenter.com) is part of the Arkansas State Parks System. Enjoy dinner at your expense at the Anglers White River Resort (www.anglerswhiteriver.com) at the confluence of Sylamore Creek and the White River. After dinner you will return to Ozark Folk Center Lodge, and if you so choose, you can attend the Arkansas State Fiddle Championship at the nearby Ozark Folk Center for $10.00.
Saturday begins with breakfast in the Ozark Folk Center restaurant at your expense. After breakfast you will travel to Buffalo Point and float the Buffalo National River (www.nps.gov/buff) to Rush, an historic zinc mining ghost town (people.uncw.edu/dockal/RushArk/index.htm). The 7.5-mile float will take approximately 4 hours. This stretch of the river is easy to negotiate. A box lunch will be provided at Rush. After lunch you will tour historic mine buildings and bat-gated zinc mines.
The tour will arrive back at the Embassy Suites Hotel early Saturday evening with an optional stop in Harrison for dinner at your expense.
Clothing – Late September weather in the Ozarks is generally warm during the day and cool at night. The high temperature is usually in the upper 70s to 80 degrees and the low temperature in the mid 50s. Dress in layers to easily adjust for temperature changes throughout the day. For the canoe trip, sunglasses, hats, and sunscreen are recommended. Dry clothes may be needed for the trip back to the hotel.
Tour expenses – Two nights lodging, two box lunches, entrance fees, and canoe rental are provided. Meals, excluding tour lunches, and miscellaneous costs are at your expense.
Arrangements have been made with the Embassy Suites Hotel to store your luggage while you are on the tour.
Monday Guest Tour to Eureka Springs
Founded in 1879 Eureka Springs will surprise and delight with its colorful history and vivid reminders of "how things were." A real Victorian Mountain Village nestled in the Ozarks, it has been lovingly preserved and is the only place in America 
where the entire downtown is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A guided bus tour of the city's outlying sights and attractions, including the award-winning Thorncrown Chapel and the Christ of the Ozarks Statue, will begin the day's experiences. A narrated tram tour will then introduce you to the historic district with its narrow winding streets, "Painted Ladies" historical homes, elegant hotels, historic springs and gardens, gift shops, antique stores, and art galleries. Next you will tour the premier 1886 Crescent Hotel and formal gardens then have lunch in the hotel's Crystal Dining Room. After lunch you will have time to explore and/or shop the historic district on your own before returning to the Embassy Suites. Lunch is included in the tour. Comfortable walking shoes are suggested.
Tuesday Tours
This tour will begin by traveling through the picturesque Boston Mountain region of northwestern Arkansas by way of Interstate 540, including passage through the only highway tunnel and over the two tallest highway bridges in Arkansas. The Hess Creek Bridge reaches a height of 210 feet near the town of Winslow and the Bohace Ravine Bridge a height of 205 feet. The interstate has 63 bridges in 38 miles with lengths up to 2,200 feet. The route will continue on U.S. Highway 71 to the area of Sebastian County which contains numerous abandoned surface and underground mines, many of which have been, or are being, reclaimed through the AML program.
The first tour stop will be the completed Mine No. 6 Acid Mine Drainage passive treatment system which treats an artesian flow from a 285-foot deep air shaft. The site is on the original Mine No. 6 complex site and many structural concrete remnants of the facility have been preserved during construction. The mine, which operated from 1908 until 1922, was the site of at least two major explosions during mining. This project was completed in two phases. The total cost for the treatment system was $494,000 and was completed spring 2009. In the late spring of this year, heavy rains over an extended period of time provided abnormal recharge into the area’s old abandoned underground workings that resulted in a 10-fold flow increase. The system did not receive any physical damage.
The second tour stop will be a short view of the Area C Highwall AML project. This project addressed a large cache of trash and two highwalls approximately 45 feet in height. Work commenced spring 2009 and may be ongoing during the tour. The backfilling of the associated pits is anticipated to buffer the spike in flow from the Mine No. 6 shaft as the pits breached area underground mine workings.
The next tour stop will be a visit to the Huntington Town West AML project which included the reconstruction of a perennial stream channel that had been diverted through spoil ridges by the mining. Design on the stream configuration benefited from the expertise within the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality Water Division. The channel was placed in nearly the original location based upon pre-mining quadrangle information. The channel was designed to provide for the stream to evolve naturally while remaining stable. Work on the project cost $1,239,000 and was completed in May, 2006.
The final stop will be a provided lunch at one of the local restaurants, then the return trip to the hotel.
The tour will begin in Missouri with a drive through a portion of the Tri-State Mining District. Historically the Tri-State Mining District, covering more than 2,500 miles in southwestern Missouri, southeastern Kansas and northeastern Oklahoma, was one of the major lead and zinc mining areas in the world. For approximately one hundred years (1850-1950), the district produced 50 percent of the zinc and 10 percent of the lead in the United States.
Lead and zinc mining left behind numerous physical and environmental hazards. Open mine shafts, collapsed mine shafts and subsidence have claimed lives and caused substantial property damage. Milling and mining of ore produced more than 500 million tons of wastes in the Tri-State area. The EPA and the Tri-States are still working today to reduce or remove potential adverse impacts posed by remaining mine wastes contaminated with lead, zinc, cadmium and other metals. 
The tour will continue with a visit to Prairie State Park, near Liberal, Missouri. The Missouri AML Program completed a reclamation project, the Bison Project, totaling 106 acres within the boundaries of Prairie State Park. Tallgrass prairie once covered more than one third of Missouri’s landscape. Today less than one percent remains; the largest portion of that one percent lies within the nearly 4,000 acres comprising Prairie State Park. The Bison Project addressed acid mine drainage, acidic mine spoil sediments, and exotic evasive plant species that were degrading the native prairie; along with two shafts and four eroding highwalls, which posed a significant public hazard. The Bison Project was completed in 1996 at a cost of $820,000, maintenance continued through 2000.
Next is a visit to the town of Mindenmines, Missouri, to look at an emergency highwall project completed by AML in 2004. This highwall was severely sloughing and was approaching US Highway 160.
The Kansas portion of the tour will begin with a provided box lunch at the second largest electric shovel in the world, Big Brutus! Designed and built by Bucyrus-Erie for the Pittsburg & Midway (P&M) Coal Mining Company, the 1850-B is the only one of its kind ever built and is recognized as an engineering 
accomplishment. Big Brutus, overlooking the Mined Land Wildlife Area near West Mineral in Cherokee County, cost $6.5 million and is an eternal tribute to the mining heritage of Southeast Kansas and to miners all across this nation who toiled to support their families.
After an opportunity to tour the grounds and museum of Big Brutus, the tour will continue to the Deer Creek Abandoned Mine Land Project site, which represents a typical Kansas highwall.
The final stop will be the Mine 19 Carbon Recovery Operation and Slurry Containment Project located on previously mined land contained in the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks Mined Land Wildlife Area.
Tri-State Lead and Zinc Mining District
From the Embassy Suites you will travel north on U.S. Highway 71 through the scenic Ozark Mountains of northwestern Arkansas and southwestern Missouri. This drive, just over a hour, will take you around Joplin to Shifferdecker Park and the Joplin Museum Complex on the west edge of town. You will tour the Everett J. Ritchie Tri-State Mineral Museum, which boasts one of the world's most exceptional collections of lead and zinc ores as well as other minerals found in the Tri-State District. This museum interprets the geology and geochemistry of the area and illustrates mining processes and methods used from the 1870s through the 1960s. In addition, there are several pieces of period mining equipment to explore.
Leaving the museum you will drive through the historic mining towns of Galena and Baxter Springs, Kansas, and into the 40-square mile Tar Creek Superfund Site in northeast Oklahoma. A windshield tour will take you through parts of the former Picher Lead and Zinc Mining District where you will observe chat piles (mine waste) over 100 feet high, areas of subsidence (some 200+ feet in diameter and 50+ feet deep), collapsed mine shafts and abandoned mill sites.
After a provided box lunch, you will visit a chat washing facility where you will observe the disposal of discarded chat washings into the underground mine workings using sonar and an underwater camera. From the chat washing facility the tour will stop at selected sites noting conditions before and after reclamation. Before returning to Rogers, the tour will conclude at a constructed wetland system being developed by the University of Oklahoma to treat metal-laden mine drainage.
EVENTS
Sunday
For the golf enthusiast a outing has been set up with the Lost Springs Golf and Athletic Club. The course is 18-hole regulation length, 72 par, 6,849 yards, with a 73 rating, and a 25-tee driving range. Tee time is 10:00 a.m. The greens fee includes a cart and a small bucket of range balls. Transportation will be available. All participants need to gather on Sunday at 9:30 a.m. inside the convention center's northwest entrance.
War Eagle Mill and War Eagle Cavern
The War Eagle Mill is an authentic reproduction of the original 1873 mill, preserving the historical significance of the grist mill as the hub of the rural community during the late 1800s and early 1900s. The War Eagle River powers a set of stone buhr grinders by an 18-foot undershot waterwheel. Antiques and tools for everyday living in the late 1800s are displayed throughout the 3-story structure. Crafts made by local artists are for sale in the gift shop as well as organic products produced by the mill (www.wareaglemill.com). Lunch will be provided at the mill's Bean Palace Restaurant, which uses its organic products as well as other local foods.
After lunch there are two ways to view the War Eagle Cavern on Beaver Lake, the newest show cavern in the nation (www.wareaglecavern.com). Both ways begin through a spectacular natural entrance. The first is an easy 60-minute, guided walking tour along the edge of an underground stream. There are no stairs or tight passages.
The second way, the spelunking tour, begins beyond the lights. With this mildly strenuous, fairly level, 2-hour tour a guide accompanies the group, but the group leads the way. The guide points out several possible passageways, and makes sure everyone stays safe. You will most likely experience huge colonies of bats, and you are guaranteed to get wet and muddy! Arrive dressed in your spelunking tour clothes: Jeans or pants, NO SHORTS, hiking boots that will get wet, and layer a jacket, long sleeve shirt and T-shirt. Gloves, kneepads, and a sturdy flashlight and backup batteries are MANDATORY! A helmet is not mandatory, but a good idea. You may want a small pack to carry a water bottle, a power bar, and extra batteries. A change of clothes, socks, and shoes are highly recommended for the trip back to the hotel. Also bring a plastic bag for your dirty clothes. The spelunking tour is very limited so register early.
The tour will leave from the convention center's northwest entrance at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday.
This year's Tuesday evening social is a Bluegrass BBQ at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Prairie Creek Park on the shores of scenic Beaver Lake. The BBQ is being catered by the Whole Hog Café. Offering world-champion barbeque, the Café is on Fodor's "Don't Miss" list for Arkansas and has been featured on the Food Network's Tasty Travels with Rachel Ray. The Bluegrass will be provided by the Stateline Bluegrass Band. For those who would like to participate, there will be games such as horseshoes and volleyball. Or just relax and enjoy the fellowship and beautiful scenery. Come dressed to play!