The Arkansas Dark-Sky Festival
If taking a constellation tour and hanging out with Bee Branch native/NASA astrophysicist Amber Straughn sounds like a good time to you, get in on this. The Arkansas Dark-Sky Festival spans three days on Bear Creek, just south of the Buffalo National River, Sept. 14-16. It will feature “a guided naked-eye tour of the summer Milky Way,” the festival guide states, “and a ‘star party’ in which telescope volunteers from several states share views of the major planets and deep-sky objects — galaxies, open clusters, globular clusters, nebulas, stars that are dying and being born.”
Daytime programming is abundant. Lodging options (which you’ll need to secure for yourself) range from primitive campsites to log cabins and the Buffalo area’s more luxurious digs; you’ll find some options near the bottom of the festival’s website.
Stay a few days with your bike and check out the area’s great cycling options.
Or, make a day trip out of it and ride with the Arkansas Times crew on our bus trip from Little Rock out to Bear Creek and back on Saturday, Sept. 16. The bus departs at noon from the UAMS Parking Lot near the old Ray Winder Field, and includes a box lunch plus a chat with Darrell Heath of the Central Arkansas Astronomical Society. Grab a pass at centralarkansastickets.com.
— Stephanie Smittle