Destination Science: Caves, Hot springs, and Diamonds in the Ozarks

ARKANSAS, USA—Arkansas is rarely on anyone’s bucket list. I found myself there only because I was visiting my mother’s family over the Christmas holidays. Then I started exploring—and what a surprise. Had I been a spelunker or a rock hound, I would already have known that Arkansas is blessed with some of the most beautiful and unusual geologic sites in the world. It is a place, asserts Mike Howard, geology supervisor of the Arkansas Geological Survey, where “everywhere you look there’s evidence of just how dynamic the earth has been.” So my family and I decided to visit some of the more remarkable locations in the Natural State.