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Arkansas

Essential Arkansas: From the Clinton Library to Crystal Bridges

Program No. 21208RJ

Get to know Arkansas, from the Clinton Library to Crystal Bridges, from hot springs and mountains to Ozark music and Southern cooking — this place has it all!

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8 days

7 nights

17 meals

7B 5L 5D

Check-in, Registration, Orientation, Welcome Dinner

Little Rock, Arkansas

Clinton Lecture, Presidential Library, Capitol

Little Rock, Arkansas

Historic Central High, Winthrop Rockefeller, Petit Jean Park

Bentonville, Arkansas

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Art Trail Walk

Bentonville, Arkansas

Thorncrown Chapel, Eureka Springs, Ozark Folk Center

Mountain View, Arkansas

Storyteller, Fine Arts Museum, Old State House Museum

Little Rock, Arkansas

Garvan Gardens, Hot Springs, Farewell Dinner

Little Rock, Arkansas

Program Concludes

Little Rock, Arkansas

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At a Glance

Arkansas is “the Natural State,” swathed in vast forests of oak, pine and hickory and adorned with rivers winding down from the Ozark Plateau and Ouachita Mountains to the mighty Mississippi. Discover these and other pristine natural treasures of Arkansas and encounter the great cultural gifts enshrined in its cities and towns. Experience the Clinton Presidential Library and Museum in Little Rock, explore state parks, quaint towns and lesser-known gems and find yourself immersed in Ozark traditions and music as you learn how Arkansans preserve them.

Activity Level

Keep the Pace

Walking up to two miles a day, standing in botanical gardens and museums for a few hours. Ability to get on and off motor coach with minimal assistance several times a day.

Best of all, you’ll…

Enjoy an in-depth look at American art at the Crystal Bridges Museum, including Frank Lloyd Wright’s Bachman-Wilson House.
Learn the legacy of Clinton’s presidency on a visit to the Clinton Presidential Library and Museum, a state-of-the-art facility.
Explore Hot Springs and Eureka Springs and learn about other interesting towns and cities that have sprung there.

Featured Expert

All trip experts

Jay Barth

Dr. Jay Barth, a native of central Arkansas, is the Graves Peace Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Politics at Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas, and serves as Chief Education Officer for the City of Little Rock. His academic work includes research on politics of the South, state government and politics, LGBT politics, political communication (particularly radio advertising), and the achievement gap in Arkansas. He is the co-author with the late Diane D. Blair of the second edition of "Arkansas Politics and Government: Do the People Rule?”

Please note: This expert may not be available for every date of this program.

Mechel Wall View biography

Mechel Wall is a mother to eight, a grandmother to eight, and the wife of Barry Wall. She is the owner and operator of WallFlower Farm, a women-owned specialty cut flower farm in Pea Ridge. She has been a volunteer trail leader at Crystal Bridges and is currently the Benton County Master Gardener. She is the founder and was the board president of Benton County Charter School Org, Inc. and a sponsor and founder of one of Arkansas’s first charter schools — Arkansas Arts Academy.

KT Cockerell View biography

KT Cockerell, a native Texan, loves to share colorful Texas history with visitors. She enjoys the adventure of discovery while leading groups and in her own personal travels as well. She has traveled extensively throughout Europe and locally. KT has been involved with the travel industry for over 20 years. KT and her husband Alan enjoy living in the small rural town of Seguin, where they have raised their four daughters.

Tari Intardonato View biography

Tari Intardonato was a teacher for many years before taking her skills to the road. She enjoys leading field trips with Road Scholar, during which she shares her knowledge and love of presidential libraries, history, textiles, and little out-of-the-way gems. Tari is an avid reader and loves sewing, watching British TV shows, and spending time with her family.

Lowell Collins View biography

Lowell Collins has been a Bentonville resident for the past 40 years. She is a retired speech-language pathologist who spent 35 years working with pre-schoolers with developmental delays. Since 2010, she has been actively involved in Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, completing the guide training program for trails and grounds, architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright House. She is a Master Gardener with expertise in native plants. Lowell has a passion for Bentonville and for sharing it with the many Crystal Bridges guests.

Jay Barth View biography

Rex Nelson View biography

Rex Nelson has been chronicling Arkansas history as a columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette since the 1990s, and has held the role of senior editor since 2017. He has worked as a political consultant and served as director of policy and communications for Governor Mike Huckabee. An avid football fan, he also serves as the voice for the Ouachita Tigers radio network.

Kathleen Pate View biography

Kathleen Pate was born and raised in Augusta, Georgia. She has an undergraduate degree in sociology and a certificate in women’s studies from the University of Georgia. Kathleen completed a thesis on the evolution of presidential library site selection to earn her master’s degree in public history from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She began her career with the National Archives in 2002. Kathleen currently serves as the director of education and public programs, a position she accepted in 2024.

Suggested Reading List (7 books)

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You can find many of the books we recommend at the Road Scholar store on bookshop.org, a website that supports local bookstores.

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Essential Arkansas: From the Clinton Library to Crystal Bridges

Program Number: 21208

A Complicated Man: The Life of Bill Clinton as Told by Those Who Know Him

by Michael Takiff

Oral historian and journalist Takiff offers a wealth of perspective to counter-or at least complicate-the prevailing, and simplistic, image many people hold of America's 42nd president, despite two prosperous terms and a decade of post-White House foreign relations work. Somewhat predictably, Takiff begins with Clinton's birth to a recently widowed mother in Hope, Ark. and ends, more or less, with wife Hillary Rodham Clinton's failure to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008.

Calico Joe

by John Grisham

An enjoyable, heart warming read that’s not just for baseball fans. An account of the rise and fall of Joe Castle, a baseball player from Calico Rock, Arkansas. Castle rose from the minor leagues to the Chicago Cubs in 1973 and became the greatest rookie anyone had ever seen.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

by Maya Angelou

In this first of five volumes of autobiography, poet Maya Angelou recounts a youth filled with disappointment, frustration, tragedy, and finally hard-won independence. Sent at a young age to live with her grandmother in Arkansas, Angelou learned a great deal from this exceptional woman and the tightly knit black community there. Marvelously told, with Angelou's "gift for language and observation," this "remarkable autobiography by an equally remarkable black woman from Arkansas captures, indelibly, a world of which most Americans are shamefully ignorant."

A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School

by Carlotta Walls

When fourteen-year-old Carlotta Walls walked up the stairs of Little Rock Central High School on September 25, 1957, she and eight other black students only wanted to make it to class. But the journey of the “Little Rock Nine,” as they came to be known, would lead the nation on an even longer and much more turbulent path, one that would challenge prevailing attitudes, break down barriers, and forever change the landscape of America.

Living in Little Rock With Miss Little Rock

by Jack Butler

With Arkansas in the forefront of the news, Butler's challenging tale of love, lust, and loss in Little Rock has all the ingredients of a winner. There is Lianne, a former beauty queen and television personality and her husband, Charles, a successful liberal lawyer and millionaire. There are also the members of Charles's firm: Tina, a poor girl made good; Lafayette, an African American former football star; and Greg, the token WASP. There's cocaine, a hostile sheriff, a creation science law, group therapy, and a couple of inept assassins. The whole story is narrated by the Holy Ghost in an Ozark accent.

A Place Apart: A pictorial History of Hot Springs

by Ray Hanley

Hanley provides a fine introduction to readers wanting a rapid but in-depth narrative of Hot Springs' physical and political growth as it evolved into a national park, recreational resort, and one of Arkansas's pre-eminent cities. Both text and photographs supply information and cultural history corroborating or dispelling prodigious myths about a city of notable and notorious characters.

First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton

by David Maraniss

Lots of people have put forth theories on what makes Bill Clinton tick, but the most trustworthy source may be David Maraniss of the Washington Post. Maraniss won a Pulitzer covering Clinton's campaign, and his book on the man is nonpareil; you simply can't understand Clinton without reading Maraniss's analysis of his past. When Bill Clinton is good, he is very, very good, and when he's bad, he's exactly like he has been all his life.

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Essential Arkansas: From the Clinton Library to Crystal Bridges

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At a Glance

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